Reinventing how policing engages with industry is key to keeping pace with the opportunities offered by emerging technologies

It’s recognised that policing in the UK suffers from capacity and capability challenges[1]. Capacity in the form of the availability to support the breadth and scale of taskings. Capability in the form of access to emerging technologies, knowledge to exploit these technologies and the ability to integrate these at an operational level. This article offers an approach to working with industry as part of a whole system response so that capability can be rapidly adopted, and the subsequent capacity and public protection benefits derived.

Embracing emerging technologies at a local level is risky for Police Forces

There is reduced spending power at local force level meaning that emerging and innovative technologies are less likely to be accessible to those in operational roles. Supporting technology suppliers by giving them access to staff and officers to conduct sufficient user research, product design and testing is not feasible on a scale that achieves the necessary pace of innovation to keep policing at the cutting edge. Consequently, without access to the financial resources offered by central government initiatives, or centrally managed large IT programmes, the environment to succeed in embracing emerging technologies from a local level is a challenging and risky one.

Integrating emerging technology at a local level is not commercially viable for industry

A lot of industry attention is given to the strategic problem space, where large funding pots are available and commercial needs can be met much more readily. From a commercial perspective it is less risky to invest effort in large, well-funded projects that are more likely to result in larger revenue tails in the following years.

How do we build a system where these commercial needs can be met whilst addressing here and now operational problems and the necessary pace of change? A comprehensive approach to commercial, technology, legal and regulatory challenges is needed to help reimagine how policing works with industry to achieve maximum value in adopting emerging technology.

Commercial models need rethinking

Commercial models should be dynamic enough to enable the quick and brief procurement of specific technologies for specific needs. We see dynamic purchasing systems overseen by Crown Commercial Services in place in other sectors, such as health, to achieve such objectives. Police commercial models should move away from large bilateral, single organisation to single supplier agreements, which can often come with high integration, training and licencing costs, to an on-demand model that enables technology services to be accessed exclusively on a task-by-task basis.

A ‘plug and play’ approach to technology standards benefits everyone

In doing this, policing must have the right technology standards and environments in place to support continuous integration, continuous deployment of software – achieved through, for example, API catalogues and a ‘plug and play’ ethos. The UK Police-Assured Secure Facility (PASF) offered by Microsoft is a big step towards enabling such an approach. Legal and regulatory constraints around the protection of personal data exist, which would need to be overcome to enable the confident sharing of operational data with competent industry partners. The use of synthetic data offers excellent promise for rapidly accelerating product design and testing, reducing the time from development to deployment. Achieving a framework that enables industry to be tasked or included in resolving very specific aspects of an investigative workflow would potentially unlock massive capacity benefits.

Transforming industry engagement to enable rapid on-demand adoption of emerging technologies

The volume and range of technologies available to support policing is vast – from automation and artificial intelligence to augmented and virtual reality. The task of understanding how this mixing pot of technologies can be applied will be expensive and time consuming if we continue with existing approaches to procurement and technology integration. Transferring purchasing power to those officers and staff who could draw directly on capability and capacity in industry by effectively tasking technology services, could be advantageous for the policing mission. Developing a means of providing a low risk, low cost, low effort commercial, technical, legal and regulatory construct is key to achieving such a transformation.

Authors

Alistair Sharp

Management Consultant - Policing and Secure account, Capgemini

Alistair Sharp is a Management Consultant with Capgemini Invent’s Policing and Secure account. Alistair has consulted for four years, prior to which he spent six years in the National Crime Agency (NCA) primarily supporting operational leaders in intelligence and operations. He started his career with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) as an Intelligence Researcher. Alistair has a BSc in Forensic and Crime Scene Science from Bournemouth University and an MA in Intelligence and International Security from King’s College London, during which time he developed an interest in collaboration between industry and the defence and national security sectors.

Alistair can be contacted on [email protected]

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