RCMP hampered by outdated technology and 'risk averse' culture: report

OTTAWA — Aging, outdated or moribund technology and data management practices across the RCMP are undermining its ability to effectively police and protect Canadians and will require significant and rapid investment, according to a new internal report.

In February, the RMCP’s Management Advisory Board (MAB) sent the police force’s commissioner, Mike Duheme, a comprehensive “advisory letter” with a stark message about its information management/information technology (IM/IT) systems. The letter was recently posted online.

Old and aging IM/IT systems are failing and are preventing the RCMP from adopting the latest technologies, meaning the national police force is also falling increasingly behind its partners technologically, wrote MAB member Doug Moen.

“Current IM/IT limitations, such as aging infrastructure, siloed legacy systems, and isolated databases, adversely affect policing effectiveness, evidence-based decision-making, and, therefore, public safety. Temporary fixes are costly and unsustainable,” reads the letter from Moen, who chairs the MAB’s Finance and Administration Standing Committee.

“Significant transformation is thus essential. This requires a comprehensive overhaul of existing IM/IT systems,” it adds.

The letter makes four broad recommendations for the RCMP. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Among them, the RCMP leadership needs to prioritize funding improvements to its technology, knock down internal silos to improve its data sharing between units, and design a better plan to improve IM/IT systems faster, writes Moen.

The advisory board also laments that addressing the RCMP’s technical debt — described as the accumulated cost of quick fixes in software development that make future changes harder and more expensive — has not been a key priority for the force’s leadership.

“Adequate funding has been scarce, and many recent attempts to secure it were not successful. The RCMP has a vision of where it wants to be, but needs top leadership support, a detailed plan and the necessary resources and mechanisms to get there,” writes the MAB.

Even small system improvements have shown “tangible” benefits, the report states. It notes that new automation and AI tools to generate access to information and privacy (ATIP) bots, transcription tools and aid in mobile decryption have delivered “measurable improvements” for the police force.

It also reveals that the RCMP created a generative AI chatbot called “Polly” to help employees answer questions about the organization’s policies.

The report says that the personnel security program, which does security checks of potential new hires, would benefit tremendously from technological improvements to aid the government’s stated goal of hiring 1,000 new RCMP employees as quickly as possible.

In some cases, it also needs to boost very basic systems, such as internet speed.

“Several RCMP areas are facing serious infrastructure limitations that slow critical work and impact operational effectiveness and data security. Limited computing power, and slow interconnectivity speed create bottlenecks, delaying access to essential datasets, and reducing data handling capacity.”

Unsurprisingly, IT procurement — a perennial headache for the federal government — is also slow, overly rigid and the source of “significant concerns” within the national police force, according to the MAB. And like much throughout the public service, RCMP culture is generally “risk averse” in all spheres including IM/IT.

“Addressing this cultural challenge is critical for the digital environment,” wrote the MAB.

It’s not the first time that an advisory body has expressed concerns about the national police force’s aging technology systems and “siloed” data management practices. In 2010, the federal auditor general revealed that the RCMP knew that some of its technological deficit “increases the risk to police and public safety and could lead to injury or death”.

Then in early 2025, the RCMP’s internal audit team sent leadership a detailed report on its IT systems in which it concluded that, since the auditor general report 15 years previous, “the RCMP’s progress on modernizing aging IT systems has been weak.”

There has been some, but far from enough, progress on improving the police force’s crucial IT/IM systems since then, the MAB noted in its letter.

The report also notes that the RCMP is facing “operational challenges” in Northern and remote communities, an issue that could “carry geopolitical implications”, the report notes ominously. It does not detail the issues further, but recommends the force further collaborate with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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