The future of the police Cross-Regional Information Sharing Project (Crisp) appears to be hanging in the balance as straitened public sector budgets, and particularly the financial problems at the Home Office, really begin to bite.

Police sources say they are disappointed, but not surprised. It has been known for some months that the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which will come into being on 1 April, will not enough money to do everything. So it was always a matter of when, rather than if.

Taking the Home Office's word for it, any changes to Impact - such as abandoning  Crisp - will improve the programme's design without reducing its function or making it late. And the millions of pounds worth of collective work done by individual forces to get their information Crisp-ready will not be wasted either, because it will go towards the longer-term Police National Database plan.

A masterful argument, leaving only one question crying for an answer. If it is possible to do the same thing, only cheaper and more simply, why on earth was it ever being pursued another way?