Police share data quality suite procurement

The Eastern Region group, which comprises Essex, Cambridge, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, has obtained a suite of the software for each force with the intention of ultimately sharing access to the data on their intelligence systems. Chief inspector Andy Gratrix, chief information officer at Cambridge Constabulary, said they have each acquired Infoshare's ClearCore Enterprise Data Quality Suite to bring together an array of data on offenders and criminal intelligence. He said the deal was done through a Ministry of Defence framework agreement, a move prompted by a lack of capacity in procurement specialists in the region when it was launched in summer 2009. Implementation of the systems is now under way. Cambridge has installed its version and is now running through the iterations to make it fully operable and Essex is at a similar stage. "We began to look into a unified database as part of the outcome from the Bichard Enquiry which, together with the Management of Police Information strategy, aimed to assess and improve the effectiveness of the police intelligence based record keeping," he said. "By combining the forces of six constabularies, we could not only deliver economies of scale, but we could create a highly accurate and effective system that would ultimately help us better protect the public." The intelligence systems provide more information than is available on the Police National Computer. The latter includes only on record facts, such as criminal convictions, while former include background information and assessments made by police officers. Gratrix told GC News that the forces acknowledged that it was necessary to preserve the quality of their data, and that each force will determine its own use of the system. "It can do data cleansing on a whole variety of things, and it's for each organisation to say what data they wanted to be matched and linked or not linked," he said. He also stressed that the forces are only using information they already hold, and that they are now closer to being able to share their information. "At the moment we have no access to each other's systems, but the end game is that we will," he said. Gratrix added: "Police departments up and down the country battle with multiple legacy systems that don't interoperate with each other, preventing a single view of all logged information and intelligence. The police forces of the Eastern Region now recognises this and with this initiative is pioneering a joined up approach that will bring together existing data that will be used as vital evidence to help prevent crimes and terrorism."