Article How the UK Can Deliver its Digital Policing Vision
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By null / 27 Aug 2020 / Topics: Mobility Cloud Microsoft Azure
By null / 27 Aug 2020 / Topics: Mobility Cloud Microsoft Azure
UK police forces are pioneers of modern law enforcement, respected around the world for their approach to public safety and crime-fighting. But it is widely acknowledged that, if policing in the UK is to continue setting the standard, forces must embrace digital technologies.
To help with this digital transformation, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) has provided guidance on how technology can aid public safety and help deliver the goals of the Police Vision 2025 strategy.
Specifically, the National Digital Policing Strategy 2020-2030 outlines how technology can augment the capabilities of officers, improve citizen engagement and enable entirely new ways of fighting crime.
As forces begin to adopt the innovations that individuals and businesses now take for granted, technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence (AI) will be used to augment the capabilities of officers and to identify crimes before they even happen. Meanwhile, the democratisation of technology means that criminals also have access to advanced capabilities, and this needs to be addressed.
However, police forces have long been held back by organisational structures that complicate decision making, leading to a reliance on legacy technology, and security concerns. The strategy outlined in the document is an aspirational one that will require many of these challenges to be resolved.
Among the innovations highlighted are artificial intelligence (AI) models that can predict crimes before they happen and ways that mobile devices and applications can make officers more effective in the field. The strategy also speaks of digitally enhanced experiences that allow the public to choose how they communicate with the police.
But above all, the strategy describes how the police will maximise the creation and collection of data to keep the public safe. This makes the issue of data management the single most important element.
Legacy technology is a huge challenge for the police. According to the NPCC, forces across the UK spent a combined £1.4 billion on technology in 2018 – 11% of the total annual police spend. As much as 30% of this IT spend is on resources to maintain on-premise infrastructure.
The applications that can transform policing require access to huge amounts of easily accessible data. Legacy infrastructure and proprietary systems are simply unsuited to this task because they lack scalability and data portability.
Cloud platforms provide the opportunity for innovation that police forces require, enabling the technologies outlined by the NPCC. The cloud will enable everything from data storage and Office 365 productivity applications to predictive analytics and robotic process automation (RPA) – freeing up officers’ time for keeping the streets’ safe.
On top of this, the cloud will provide the foundation for more effective, secure national data sharing, increasing the speed and effectiveness of investigations and the accuracy of AI algorithms.
While forces have a duty to the taxpayer to maximise existing investments, legacy technology hinders innovation. Cloud platforms not only deliver a range of performance benefits, but they are more cost-effective as they eliminate the need to invest in on-premise infrastructure and ease the maintenance burden on IT teams.
However, adoption is still limited. According to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, 75% of police forces still manage some of their data and applications on-premise, while 71% store less than a quarter of their data in the cloud. More than a tenth (13%) do not store anything in the cloud at all.
Security is the biggest cause of cloud scepticism which is unsurprising when you consider that police handle extremely sensitive data. However, cloud technology can actually make police forces more secure, as development and maintenance is handled by the public cloud provider. Major vendors such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service (AWS) have UK-based data centres certified to handle police workloads.
These developments have been accompanied by a drastic change in attitudes over the past two years.
This is partly due to the National Enablement Programme (NEP) for Microsoft Office 365. This programme, which provides a migration blueprint for adoption, allows officers to easily share and access information while in the field.
The success of this programme has led many forces to reconsider long-held assumptions about the cloud. Adding further encouragement is the fact that the Home Office now uses AWS to power national-level IT systems.
If the more long-term and ambitious goals of the strategy are to be delivered, then cloud adoption needs to happen first. Individual forces must assess their existing IT investments and needs before devising a suitable migration strategy.
It may be that one cloud platform is more suited for one force or for a particular application. Just because one organisation uses Microsoft Office 365 it doesn’t mean it has to use Microsoft Azure for everything else. There are benefits to each platform.
The police have made significant progress over the past few years, but now is no time for complacency. The pace of innovation has never been as fast, and it will never be as slow again. The sooner forces act, the sooner the challenges of the future can be met.
For more details on'How Insight can support your force with your cloud journey', please email the Insight Police Team on IPT@insight.com or call 0344 846 3333.
The National Digital Policing Strategy 2020-2030 outlines the technologies and policies that can transform policing in the UK. It is an ambitious document that can be achieved only if forces embrace the cloud and solve the challenge of data management.