Police demand 179m euros in damages from Sopra Steria for failed digitisation project
The federal police are demanding 179 million euros in damages from IT consultant Sopra Steria for the failed i-Police digitisation project. This was announced by commissioner general Eric Snoeck in the Chamber on Friday. In addition, the police are also demanding the repayment of 65 million euros in invoices.
In 2021, Sopra Steria was awarded a government contract to develop a new digital platform for the local and federal police, but despite 76 million euros in paid invoices, nothing came of this ambition. At the end of last year, interior minister Bernard Quintin unilaterally terminated the contract. Parliament wants to know where things went wrong and invited the various players involved in the case to a hearing.
Last week, it was announced that the federal police had sued Sopra Steria. This was confirmed by commissioner general Eric Snoeck in the Chamber on Friday. “Colossal sums are at stake in this dispute,” he said. The police are demanding the repayment of 65 million euros plus interest and damages estimated at 179 million euros. The preliminary hearing before the court is scheduled for 12 March.
Crucial is the question of whether Sopra Steria delivered workable applications or not. Last week, the company's top management claimed in parliament that it did, but on Friday, the police emphatically contradicted this. “If you have a house with bricks and a floor, that does not mean it is ready for delivery,” said Koen Van Overtveldt, director general of the federal police. “The applications were not applicable in the field.”
The police and government only gradually realised that the IT company was unable to deliver on its promised digital revolution from the autumn of 2023 onwards. Marc De Mesmaeker, commissioner general until April 2023, said he had “no reason to doubt the successful outcome of the project”, apart from a few concerns about “incomplete financing”.
But Snoeck, who took over as commissioner general in mid-2023, “inherited a very problematic situation,” he said. The first signs that things were going wrong with i-Police came in September 2023, he outlined. “It became increasingly clear that Sopra Steria was struggling to answer questions and deliver products, and the delays were getting longer and longer.”
Under Snoeck, a crisis manager was eventually brought in, the scope of the project was reduced and, at the end of 2025, it was finally unilaterally terminated by interior minister Bernard Quintin. The commissioner general emphasised that under his administration, hardly any money went to the project. “All expenditure that still occurred at that time was the result of previous commitments.”
Exactly where things went wrong, and above all, who is responsible for the debacle, remained unclear. However, it seems that i-Police may have been too ambitious. According to Anke Stakenborg, who took over as director of the police IT department (DRI) at the beginning of this year, “comprehensive IT projects, spread over several years, are too complex”. The government wanted a multi-year project with a predictable budget, but that conflicts “with the need for adjustments along the way”, she explained.
"We cannot remedy in the short term what a large international firm failed to do in four years"
In the meantime, the police are still stuck with an outdated IT infrastructure. The DRI is underfunded and understaffed, said Stakenborg. “More than 100 often outdated applications are run by 50 employees (..) We cannot remedy in the short term what a large international firm has failed to do in four years.”
Her departments are working on innovation, but they are making do with what they have, she said. “To really make the transition to a digital transformation, more innovative projects are needed. Today, we lack the resources for that.”
Session of the chamber commission for Interior Affairs about i-Police © BELGA PHOTO JAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE
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