Lynx in South Yorkshire

PFI Knowledge Solutions (PFIKS) have announced that they have entered into a collaboration agreement which enables them to make South Yorkshire’s force-wide information sharing solution, known internally as Lynx, available to all UK forces.

PFIKS will promote, deliver and support the South Yorkshire police developed Lynx solution, as a component of their overall Intelligent Information strategy. Lynx has been proven to generate significant efficiency savings by reducing the time it takes to locate and retrieve all the electronic information held by a force about an individual, a location or a vehicle. Lynx was developed by South Yorkshire who worked closely with key business users in their force to identify their information needs and the way in which they accessed the information held in each of the force’s information services. Their Lynx solution is a single-point-of-access information gateway that enables users to carry out a simple search but to also retrieve all the information held in their crime, custody and nominals databases.

South Yorkshire understands how this technology – fully integrated with their back office data sources – enables them to create a solution that every officer can use to retrieve all the information they require in an easy to navigate set of results. An additional benefit of PFIKS’s autonomy based solutions is the ability to contextually search millions of records in milliseconds without consuming huge amounts of processor power or server resources.

“Lynx makes a very significant difference to our business because our officers now find all the information they need in one hit, at any time of day or night. We are delighted that Lynx has proved so successful and exceeded our estimates of time savings. It is a very good example of all the information, at the right time, in the right place for the right cost,” said David Rock-Evans, Head of Information Services at South Yorkshire.

“Our relationship with PFIKS has created real benefits for the force and we are delighted to be collaborating with them as they have the right capabilities and approach to support a wider adoption of Lynx for the benefit of the police service.”

Ian Elliott, Director of Business Development for PFIKS, said: “Our Intelligent Information strategy for police moves away from point solutions and makes flexible, efficient, seamless integration and collaboration across the enterprise information assets a reality.

“We are delighted to have this opportunity to work with South Yorkshire Police, who share the same vision and goals as us in bringing Lynx to the market as part of our strategy.”