Welsh Police Collaborate to Create Enhanced Information Sharing Capability

Pan-Wales Information Sharing

Welsh Police Collaborate to Create Enhanced Information Sharing Capability

The combined strength of North and South Wales Police is 5,056 officers, representing approximately 65% of all Welsh police officers. South Wales is home to Wales’ major population centres, Swansea and Cardiff.

WALES AND NICHE RMS

Both North Wales Police (NWP) and South Wales Police (SWP) are using Niche RMS to support crime, intelligence, incident management, custody and case preparation, using one single system to capture core operational information and make it available for policing purposes. The two services have combined to pioneer law enforcement data-sharing in the UK with InterNiche, a unique capability of Niche RMS. InterNiche supports peer-to-peer connections of separate installations via the Police National Network (PNN), and allows users to securely connect to and search data that another service has made available. For instance, officers in South Wales can choose to search only SWP records in Niche RMS, or make a simple selection to additionally search records in North Wales. The two other Welsh services, Dyfed Powys and Gwent Police, are not Niche RMS users; however, their central intelligence functions have access to Niche RMS and can conduct searches in the same way as users in either North or South Wales Police. InterNiche is a seamless process that affords the means for detailed searches to be conducted in another service’s core operational system. Because InterNiche is a peer-to-peer, separate-installation-to-separate-installation, informationsharing function of Niche RMS, there are no barriers to the size of the total combined user base.

THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

The police services in Wales have a long history of collaboration on a range of initiatives. A key collaborative initiative is information sharing, and Dyfed Powys Police were a lead agency nationally on the UK’s Cross Region Information Sharing Project (CRISP) project. Following the Home Office decision in early 2007 not to pursue CRISP as a data sharing solution, all the Welsh forces reviewed their options for providing a pan-Wales information-sharing capability to support their policing requirements. The task was simple: to examine options to improve operational information sharing, and they concluded that using the capabilities of Niche RMS supported that strategic objective.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• A significantly enhanced information-sharing capability has been delivered across Wales with no additional system support and at no additional cost.
• The InterNiche function is a practical and proven capability in current use to support information and intelligence sharing.