1st April 2025
Master data management in UK policing Part Four: Public safety
By An-Chan Phung, MDM Product Innovation Officer, Civica
PC Sharma and PC Jones are in an incident response vehicle and on their way to a situation that has been classified as an immediate priority – it’s a call in which there is an immediate threat or risk of harm to someone’s safety. Arriving on the scene as quickly as possible is always a priority for officers, especially in their role as protectors of civilian safety. With time being of the essence, so too is the availability of complete and accurate data about the person, the location and any known links and associations that will best inform the roles involved in the incident.
The officers arrive at the scene – a backstreet car repair shop where an argument has broken out within the last half an hour between the owner and an angry customer. A neighbouring business owner called 999 as the argument escalated when the customer grabbed a large metal object and began to break glass and threaten staff.
Physically arriving at the scene in good time is just one aspect in supporting public safety. It’s arguably even more important that the speed of information exchange within the police and with third parties also has high standards for pace. This, unlike some of the external factors that could cause delays to officers arriving on the scene, is something that can be controlled, but only when police forces have the right tools to make data exchange as efficient as possible.
In this instance, however, there is no ANPR system in the response vehicle. PCs Sharma and Jones still await the results of a check coming from command and control where they hope to find out useful information about the vehicle in question and its owner. The responding officers are also unaware that the driver has links with a known criminal gang.
Master Data Management
In this series of blogs, we have been exploring how Master Data Management can create a joined-up approach to data in policing. We’ve looked at its role in proactive policing and reducing officer risk. Now, we will consider the role of data in helping to deliver greater public safety.
Master Data Management makes it easy to integrate numerous different sources of data into a single source of truth – a golden nominal. Currently, however, police forces are fighting against siloed, inconsistent and poor-quality data. Establishing the full picture around Person, Object, Location and Events (POLE) requires a lot of manual effort and resource. Indeed, there are many challenges with legacy technology in police forces, which was where this series began.
But this doesn’t need to be the case. Through Master Data Management, police forces can benefit from joined-up information across POLE elements with just a single enterprise search conducted in real time. It is used to match and visualise complex data and identify relationships for frontline, operational and leadership roles in the police. In this way, data becomes a trusted strategic asset, turning information into intelligence with concise, pertinent output that helps police officers, detectives and data analysts perform their jobs with greater effectiveness.
Data use in improving public safety
The need for early sharing of POLE intelligence goes beyond the role of command and control briefing their frontline officers before they arrive on scene.
Police constables want to have a clear understanding of ‘who’s behind the door’ when they arrive so that they can understand the potential dangers that could be posed to both officers and the public, or areas for investigation that may require particular attention.
Investigators want to receive accurate intelligence at the first time of asking to help speed up their analysis and avoid missing important links between key data points.
Police force leadership want to be able to make informed decisions when deploying officers, both to get the best people for a particular job and to be mindful of officer welfare.
Police Chiefs also want to receive timely information to ensure that they are meeting the best possible professional standards.
Underpinning all of these communication goals, a reliable data exchange ultimately helps police to do their jobs more effectively and to deliver improved public safety.
Reaching outcomes faster with data
Before receiving any further information from command and control, PCs Sharma and Jones are able to make an arrest based on the man’s disorderly conduct and aggravated criminal damage. He is taken back to the police station where he calms down and explains how he felt that he had been ripped off before he became aggressive and threatened violence. He is charged and later released.
On this occasion, the link is not made to his affiliation with a drug gang. While that piece of information was not relevant to the incident at the garage, it does later become relevant for one of the force’s data analysts. Ms Abebe is working on gathering information for a case targeting a large-scale criminal operation suspected of moving drugs into the country and dispersing them across county lines. Ms Abebe is connecting the vehicles and movements of senior gang members to gather evidence against a number of suspects, including the man previously arrested. The case is a complex one that includes exploitation of many vulnerable individuals at lower levels of the gang and in the local community.
Ms Abebe is extremely conscientious when gathering data from the different systems her force uses, combining it into her own, single record. In fact, she has spent months diligently cross-referencing, standardising, removing duplicates and cleansing mountains of data into a single usable format. She has also needed to work with partners at police forces in neighbouring jurisdictions to combine data from their systems, which was not at first compatible with her records.
Finally, the case is beginning to crack open, but it has taken time – several months after one of the top suspects was involved in the other altercation. This drug gang will soon be broken up and its most dangerous members will be locked up.
Can time-consuming data analysis be reduced with technology?
To piece together this insight from across multiple systems is time consuming, yet there is always time pressure to support the progressing of cases. However, moving too hastily can compromise the high levels of data accuracy and completeness required for effective policing.
If only the heavy administrative burden for Ms Abebe could be reduced to provide the trusted insights required in a shorter time period? In doing so, Ms Abebe’s expertise would be better utilised, increasing the value contributed for the same effort.
With automation joining the sources of data up more seamlessly to support Ms Abebe in reducing the time to provide insights, what would be the positive impact to reducing the window of opportunity for crimes to be committed by the gang against their vulnerable victims?
Will PCs Sharma and Jones and police investigators be able to work from instant, reliable data sources in all their efforts to maintain public safety?
The technology is already available to make this all happen. For more information on how Master Data Management can transform your operations, complete the form below
You can read our complete blog series for UK police forces use of Civica Master Data Management here.
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