Social Media Management · SocialSignIn Ltd. Trading as Orlo for Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire (Mar 2025)

The Services to be Provided

Social Media Management CPA SPU 2249P is for the provision of management of social media accounts in one central place, and to allow users to respond to contact as professionally as they would with a 999 or 101 call, holding real-time conversations with the public via social media accounts, with the added benefit of being able to apply restrictions per user on who is able to reply to what.

The Ground for Direct Award

The Direct Award is being made under option A - the requirement to be compatible with an existing asset.

Justification

Under the NPCC Digital Public Contact Programme there are only two nationally approved social media management platforms (with significant pricing disparity between the 2) – a set of criteria was developed to ensure platforms are suitable for usage by police forces for social media engagement this includes tools to ensure content (chat logs with public) can be exported in usable format for use in cases.

If Cheshire Constabulary were to have to move to a new platform we would need to re-train the 301 users of the tool on how to operate the platform. Our preferred training method is in-person but even if we moved training online this would take considerable time to make sure all users are suitably aware of how to use all the features of the tool before we can confidently have them interact with the public without risk. We would lose archived messages that may have been deleted on social media, but are retained by the incumbent supplier. Staff would no longer have access to a stock image library, again slowing down the process of providing timely updates.

A smartphone shortcut has been added to work devices so they can quickly get onto the platform. A new shortcut would need to be vetted by IT services and deployed to devices

The platform is used by colleagues in the Force Control Centre to engage directly with members of the public and take crime reports. Whilst this isn’t encouraged method of engaging and reporting incidents (staff attempt to push people towards preferred reporting tools – website, phone, etc.) it is a potential and a move to another tool would require FCC colleagues to be extracted from their roles to receive training to ensure they can carry out their jobs properly and ensure the public are safe.

The digital team would need to relink every single social media account which would be time consuming

To elaborate on this - when you go to add a social media account you need to log directly into the account and then go to the social media management tool to verify the connection. Some platforms require 2 factor authentication when logging into every account which adds time but there are also rules in place checking for suspicious activity on platforms which means we wouldn’t be able to add all accounts in one day or we could risk having accounts locked.

Supplier Details

SOCIALSIGNIN LTD

Company number 08237170

Contract Commencement

Planned for mid March once the 8 day standstill from Contract Award Notice has expired