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pervasive cameras and red tape: the future of data management?
When it comes to data management, the constraints on Britain’s police forces could be the thin end of the wedge for the wider public sector according to Dave Scotton, managing director - police, Civica. Here he provides an exclisve view for the BAPCO Journal...
Police forces have achieved excellent stewardship of data capture and use. However, the picture is complicated by government’s continuing emphasis, and various agencies desire for ‘joined up’ operations. As a result, data management is increasingly becoming an operational minefield requiring a more strategic approach to be set by Government.
Furthermore, without a step change in attitudes to grass roots’ operational frameworks governing data sharing, much of the public sector could follow the police in having to adopt time-consuming processes to reconcile different data management, cost control and compliance demands.
The 21st century police service faces a contradiction of requirements. Forces and public agencies are being encouraged by the government to share data while paradoxically, operational specifications on data protection become more prescriptive. Police forces’ data management and access regimes are becoming more complex and the guidance framework and operational processes for controlling, authorising and auditing access to data needs to keep pace with this change.
This situation may be addressed in time by the advent of the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA). The NPIA’s long term remit will include the raising of operational standards across Britain’s 53 police forces. However, in the short term, police forces are being asked to evolve new types of joint working to meet the broadening homeland security agenda while delivering overall cost savings.
This delicate ‘balancing act’ risks being overturned altogether because of the growing level of litigation where defendants challenge convictions because police officers failed to comply exactly with the operational requirements of the criminal justice legislation.
There are four trends in particular that will strongly impact on public sector agencies’ data management thinking – technological change, co-ordination of operations and the government specifications on data protection and public privacy concerns.
New technologies
A look at a relatively new innovation illustrates operational impact. Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) was introduced in the 1990s to track interest vehicles and “deny criminals the use of the roads.” While very successful in analysing movements of vehicles associated with criminal elements, ANPR, by its very nature, demands that data is shared across forces and different agencies, raising questions of procedural compliance.
Such innovations inevitably pose new interoperability and administrative questions of different forces. Industry observers know there is considerable scope to further integrate back office systems to achieve more up-to-date information for police intercept teams, officers able to use recent sightings when investigating incidents, intelligence analysts able to identify patterns of vehicle movement and most of all, forces able to share cross border intelligence more easily. The ANPR community remains committed to a completely joined up system to address these issues.
Co-ordination
A look at the nature of police operations with many different executive agencies and authorities highlights other challenges on the use of information. Multi-force and multi-agency projects based on sharing of data are routinely planned and agreed and carried out. As an example, on the day of an operation in a London borough to target uninsured drivers and illegally parked vehicles blocking residential roads, Revenues and Customs officers, local police and local authority parking enforcement teams are able to share data very effectively. However successful, this is one very closely focused operation using a specific ‘pocket’ of data: though successful, such operations are labour intensive with time taken up by planning, organising relevant permissions and de-duplicating of data. Should central government’s wider drive for joining up services with Local Area Agreements and police forces sharing services be driven through nationwide, many different departments will have to address data sharing tasks on a regular basis.
Specifications
The challenges described have been further complicated by the prevalence of detailed technical specifications from particular government departments governing ICT and the handling of data. While we can understand the motivation for creating a detailed data management specification, these often do not take account of either the changing factors affecting use of information or different departmental processes. Such specifications demand a more broad-based discussion involving potential partners and operational staff levels before they can fully address police service’s constraints.
Big brother society?
The 21st century has also seen intensified public concerns over civil liberties particularly in relation to executive agencies’ use of data. Arguments rage about doctors’ access to health records. Scarcely a week goes by without TV viewers being reminded the public ‘is photographed 300 times every day’ by CCTV cameras. These fears have been compounded by recent research by the industry’s representative body, CameraWatch, which in May published a study saying 90% of CCTV systems – particular those outside retail outlets - are operated illegally. Though this claim has not been tested in court, it seems only a matter of time before a legal test case forces changes in data capture.
This public concern is ironic given that police forces operate a well-defined permissions system when using the Police National Computer (PNC) database with all forces provide in-depth training and operate stringent procedures for its operation. From this strong foundation, other police data sharing innovations have supported best practice: police officers’ Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) keep no data files and information is provided in ‘look up’ mode only. Police forces’ data management records are remarkable too given the explosion in Internet and broadband channels for disseminating information. Despite the media questioning several police forces’ use of data relating to a number of high profile cases, the national picture of forces’ data management policies can only reassure the public.
Nevertheless, there is continuing pressure on police forces to refine their access systems within their data management operations. They are being required to provide greater transparency as to who accessed what, where and when and why. Will different arms of government be able to collaborate more closely or will the current safe but cumbersome state of affairs remain in place?
Data management: different outcomes
One scenario is gradual change, driven from the top down, where the rules relating to accessing data remain onerous but are gradually improved as different government organisations learn to run joint operations more effectively. In this respect, police forces’ rigorous procedures on access and sharing of data will stand them in good stead.
A second more progressive outcome is the rise of “bottom up” approaches to sharing processes among police forces. Momentum comes from the government’s continuing interest in forces sharing resources and driving efficiencies, irrespective of the failure of the large scale force mergers planned several years ago. More collaborative operations will also be ushered in by set piece reviews of policing. The Bichard report was prominent among these, calling for better data sharing to improve detection rates.
The third, and on recent evidence most probable outcome, is the level of technological innovation driving change as different police forces reach out for performance improvements with reduced operational costs. With the emergence of new forms of data capture – body scanning and police headcams - alongside greater security screening at transport hubs like airports is adding to administrative pressures on hard-pressed forces. Unless there remains a robust, co-ordinated national strategy relating to data capture, management and storage, police forces and their partners could, despite their efficiencies, gradually be overwhelmed by mounting data management and compliance costs.
Software and service providers are helping the police to bring about step changes in the structuring and permissions for accessing data. Meeting police requirements, they are building a data control framework with greater user flexibility and simplified compliance. Working with a number of police forces, Civica is building ‘intelligent’ interfacing between the user and personal data to ensure access levels are defined and appropriate for the specific user.
The company is also actively marketing an “auditor” access module that adds a further level of protection. The module captures the reasons why a particular individual wants to access a set of data before the access is authorised. Such approaches not only maintain a record of what information has been accessed, by whom and when, but also the context behind the transaction. This ‘contextual audit’ is then accessible for supervisory staff to review why data is being accessed. Within the police sector or for wider multi-agency collaborations, this is particularly valuable to allow early identification of any inappropriate access to information.
Ultimately there has to be a balancing between privacy concerns against operational balance and finding the strategic framework and the technology systems that tie the two points together in a practical way. Do you prefer pervasive data capture that helps safeguard their children or that the bureaucrats removed from street level operations are able to continue to define the parameters for their executive agencies’ data management?
