Empowering Policing Through Data & Tech Innovation in 2025

Data management in UK policing Part One: Overcoming legacy systems

By An-Chan Phung, Chief Innovation Officer, Civica

When the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners together with the National Police Chiefs’ Council put together their Policing Vision 2025¹ back in 2015 – a ten-year plan to ensure that policing could keep pace with technological and societal changes – one buzzword phrase that was everywhere at the time was ‘big data’.

Global tech companies were all making moves to take their empires to the next level by leveraging the power of data. Apple launched its first watch, Amazon and Microsoft brought their machine learning offerings to market and IBM announced that it would be investing £3bn in Internet of Things technologies. These initiatives were all aimed at building a more detailed understanding of people’s behaviour by capturing their interactions with the digital world. They relied on connecting all the different points along an individual’s data trail to provide the valuable insights needed to improve services.

In response, it was also the time when the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe, commonly known as GDPR, was finally agreed and could move to its drafting stage.

Data in digital policing

Against this backdrop, enhancing ‘digital policing’ capabilities was one of the key focus points within the Policing Vision. An important part of this would be to get a better grasp on collecting, processing, managing and sharing data.

It recognised that the role of the digital world, not only in criminal attacks but also as an essential tool in crime prevention and community engagement, was going to keep growing in importance. And, of course, it did.

Now, arriving at that vision’s 2025 destination, we can consider how digital policing has advanced, but more importantly we can question what is still needed to fully unlock the vast opportunities that master data management can offer to UK policing.

Spoiler alert – there is still much to be done!

Lack of data maturity in the police

On the one hand, the rise of sophisticated cybercrime has meant that there has been no option other than to stay ahead of the game with early adoption of advanced new crimefighting technologies. There also continues to be significant investment in IT (around 11% of annual budgets² ) and technology (about £1.4bn per year³ ).

While this is all very positive, unfortunately there is a different story when you look through the lens of day-to-day administrative operations.

This is where you find many outdated systems, legacy technology and inefficient processes for things as simple as record keeping and cross-referencing information. Data simply isn’t collected and maintained in consistent ways, whether that’s between different records, from one department to the next, or across every different force.

Where the big tech companies have spent the last decade integrating their data sources to transform services, the current lack of data maturity within police forces means that, overall, they are still struggling to make their data work.

The challenges of legacy data systems in UK police forces

The Police Foundation, in partnership with Virgin Media O2 Business, published its report The power of information – How to unlock the potential of digital, data and technology in policing towards the end of 2024. Here it identified that “too much police technology is outdated, the police are burdened with siloed legacy systems, data is often of poor quality and inconsistently collected, and it is difficult to share information when so many of the core local systems do not speak to each other.” ⁴

Meanwhile, the Police Digital Service (PDS) said in its National Policing Digital Strategy 2020 – 2030 that “the challenges in modernising our data and technology are well known: legacy technology and supplier lock-in; our organisational structures; underinvestment in key areas; conservative risk appetite; and inconsistent understanding of our data.” ⁵

Fundamental issues with police data management

These issues represent fundamental problems that need to be resolved before data can be an effective tool in modern policing.

Legacy technology not only acts as a blocker to progress, but it also creates what is known as technical debt. This is where good money is thrown after bad just to keep an outdated system up and running. One commentator within The Police Foundation’s report estimated that “90 per cent of current police IT spend is going on maintaining legacy systems rather than investing in technology that will transform services.”

To compound the problem further, these legacy systems create inefficient processes when users must find workarounds or duplicate efforts to complete a task.

Consider the process of corroborating information within the POLE model (Person, Object, Location, Event). Police officers may need to refer to several different records, from crime reports, custody reports and intelligence to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), missing persons, firearms, or sometimes third-party data such as ordinance survey information to understand the geography of location that they need to visit. This may also require accessing both local and national databases.

When these records sit in different places with varied input standards or access requirements, the job of creating an accurate picture of the situation becomes extremely convoluted, leaving police forces hamstrung before they have even begun.

Improving data maturity in UK policing

So, what is the solution?

As with any modern organisation, data now needs to be viewed as a strategic asset. It needs to be centrally managed in a way that sources from multiple systems can be integrated into a consolidated record or you can identify the ‘golden nominal’. Only when there is a complete, accurate and shareable data source can any of the digital transformation really begin.

And what could this transformation look like in a police force?

Over the coming weeks we will be releasing a series of articles that examine the impact of achieving better data maturity across several use-cases. These include how master data management can assist in effective crime prevention, how it can reduce risks to police officers, improve public safety, and enable more partnerships to enhance the future of policing.

We will also be looking at how Police Scotland is taking a lead in its mission to become ‘the most digitally enabled police force in Europe’⁶ including an investment in Master Data Management

To find out more on taking the first step towards greater data maturity in your police force, visit here.

1. https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/policing_vision_2025.pdf

2. https://pds.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/National-Policing-Digital-Strategy-2020-2030.pdf

3. https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/power-of-information-FINAL.pdf

4. https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/power-of-information-FINAL.pdf

5. https://pds.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/National-Policing-Digital-Strategy-2020-2030.pdf

6. https://emergencyservicestimes.com/2024/03/28/police-scotland-aiming-to-be-the-most-digitally-enabled-police-force-in-europe