CCTV shake-up after 10 years in operation
BACK in March 2011 City Centre Initiative (CCI) manager Jim Roddy wrote to former Acting Town Clerk John Meehan asking the Council to approve a re-tender of the CCTV contract which would see the current control centre shifted.
This was partly out of security fears, partly out of a desire to meet industry standards and partly out of an enhanced CCTV offering brought by the proposed new supplier, he wrote.
He asked Derry City Council to commit to the same level of funding for the CCTV for the next three years “as in order to keep the price lower and make the move cost effective we need to, in principle agree with our new landlords that we will enter into a three year deal. We have agreed with our other funder, the PSNI.”
He also argued that the current site which has been operating successfully for a decade was beginning to fall below the required standards for the monitoring of public space CCTV.
However, by June 2011 current operator USEL’s boss Sam Humphries complained of the “restrictive criteria” for selecting a new CCTV partner.
“We were not invited as they have two criteria which we failed to meet,” he wrote on June 2. “We do not have an NSA Gold Standard facility as we monitor the cameras in the CCI control room, we never had our own room.”
He added: “Secondly, the company had to have their head office in Londonderry/Derry City. Strangely restrictive in our view.”
During the same month this letter was sent, the Sentinel reported how USEL was seeking guidance on the review and re-tender of the CCI monitoring operation, which it appeared set to lose despite 10 years of delivery.
We later revealed how Wired Up Solutions - wrote to Derry City Council’s Acting Town Clerk John Meehan on April 19 with its concerns about the CCI tender.
A fortnight later Wired Up proprietor Cormac Hopkins wrote another email to the Town Clerk’s office having failed to receive a reply to his concerns.
Ultimately, due to the NIAO’s request for a review the process was stopped .
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Tuesday 21 May 2013
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