Underpinning force intelligence

Leicestershire Constabulary has unveiled a new ‘briefing, tasking and de-briefing’ system designed to improve the intelligence processes and products utilised by the force.

Leicestershire Constabulary’s new ‘briefing, tasking and de-briefing’ system is part of a programme of work to improve the intelligence infrastructure within the force and to comply with the principles underpinning the Government’s Management of Police Information (MOPI) Impact programme.
Leicestershire Constabulary’s director of intelligence, Superintendent Mark Wilson, explained: “We were without a corporate system to coordinate our briefing and linked-tasking processes across the organisation, neither did we have anything in place to capture methods of learning and best practice from the results of our intelligence-led activity.”
The new web-based system has been developed in partnership with Worktribe Ltd, a Nottingham-based company which specialises in ‘workflow and tracking’ applications.
Challenge
Leicestershire Constabulary had no ‘big box solution’ for intelligence and relied on a number of legacy and newer systems linked together through an innovative search engine.
The challenge involved finding or developing a system that was compliant with the National Intelligence Model (NIM), the National Briefing Model and the Management of Police Information Codes.
System
The new Worktribe system is accessed through the force intranet and is also accessible to operational officers via the mobile data network.
The system is designed to manage intelligence-led business from the strategic assessment process, through resulting control strategies and delivery plans, to the tasking and coordination process at force, basic command unit (BCU) and neighbourhood levels.
The information contained on the system is held as a corporate resource and users have access to it through an active directory that allows granular access relevant to individual posts.
The system supports the development and publication of all the key intelligence products and provides a useful audit trail to record and highlight all contributions and their makers.
The system also provides a tracking and recording system to support the allocation of all tasks flowing from any of these intelligence products or associated tasking meetings.
Supt Wilson added: “The system includes the Government Protective Marking Scheme (GPMS) marking of all the data held and automatically logs future review, retention and disposal dates in compliance with MOPI guidelines.”
Sergeant Phil Tebbs, who is responsible for the tasking and coordination process on Leicestershire Constabulary’s South BCU, has been involved in the development of the system and is a key user.
He explained: “One of the strengths of the system is the fact that everybody has access to their allocated tasks and can result them on the system; and from a coordination point of view I can see what has been resulted and what remains outstanding.”
Tom Price, managing director of Worktribe said: “We approached this project as a partnership, which has been very constructive on both sides. It has allowed us to create a MOPI-compliant system that is tailored to Leicestershire Constabulary’s work processes, and to launch this on time and in budget.”
Benefits
The introduction of this system has provided Leicestershire Constabulary with a uniformed approach to briefing, tasking and de-briefing. The system is used to store all key intelligence documents from across the organisation including de-brief and results analysis. All of these documents can be retrieved or subjected to ‘wild card’ or ‘fuzzy logic’ search to assist with learning and the development of best practice.
A key use for the system is to ensure that the activity on the ground directly relates to control strategy delivery plans and is intelligence led and not opportunity focused.
The system has already been developed to manage prison recalls and in the near future community impact assessments.

•Leice