Humberside Police creates hi-tech intelligence system

Humberside Police is integrating millions of records to create an advanced crime and intelligence system that will meet new government data standards.

It has just agreed a seven-year extension to its contract with technology specialists Unisys Corporation (UK) to support and extend the capabilities of CIS4, the fourth incarnation of the force’s criminal and intelligence system.

It will also become the first UK force to use an offshore support model, allowing 24×7 support.

CIS4 is a critical operational system used by Humberside Police to link vital information from units responsible for crime, intelligence and domestic violence. This integrated justice information system also interfaces with command and control and customer relationship management software.

A web-based solution, CIS4 provides police officers with a single real-time system with improved search and information presentation capabilities. It gives officers single-point access to relevant and up-to-date information.

Rather than maintaining a whole series of data in silos, CIS4 links all information to a single entity such as name, location or other information types. Officers can type in a suspect’s name and find out the person’s address, past convictions, car registration and other relevant information. This ‘golden entity’ concept is designed to bring operational benefits in crime prevention and investigation to front line officers.

The project involved the migration and integration into a database of substantial volumes of data. Details of 1.4 million crimes, 1.2 million people, and six million intelligence notes were migrated. Between 500,000 and 600,000 records were eliminated by merging or by removing duplication and the integrated database was populated with cleansed legacy data, increasing the number of data tables from 40 to 1,500 tables.

The CIS4 solution culminates three-and-a-half years of collaboration between Unisys and Humberside Police to develop, test and implement the system.

Unisys developed CIS4 in close collaboration with Humberside Police and Microsoft, in line with the Management of Police Information (MOPI) standard set out by the Bichard Inquiry.

Graham Dawson, head of Information Services at Humberside Police, said: “CIS4 is an extremely important project for the force and for public safety. This program sits at the hub of our operational capability.”

Unisys will support CIS4 primarily in the UK, with an additional support team based offshore at the Unisys global sourcing operations centre in Bangalore, India.

“This project is a great example of a successful intelligence-led policing solution helping to fight crime,” said Duncan Tait, vice president and managing director, Unisys UK, Middle East and Africa. “This solution provides interoperability, reusability and openness to boost the Humberside force’s front-line policing capabilities.”