Building The Foundation For A New Era Of Peacetime Policing In The Province

Police Service of Northern Ireland

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) polices the six counties of Northern Ireland — an area that includes the city of Belfast — and has a sworn strength of 7,500 officers. Northern Ireland’s 1.7 million-strong population is spread over 5,400 square miles. The ongoing transition from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the implications of the Patten Report and its 175 recommendations ranging across all aspects of policing, present unique challenges for the new era of peacetime policing in the province.

PSNI AND NicheRMS

NicheRMS is the PSNI’s core operational information system, supporting the service’s transition to community-based policing. This single, unified system provides information on people, locations, vehicles and incidents, and supports an intelligence management capability compliant with the principles of the UK National Intelligence Model. PSNI is also using NicheRMS to support the Causeway Project — a program that facilitates information exchange between the criminal justice partners in Northern Ireland, with the goal of increasing efficiencies throughout the criminal justice system and improving service to the public.

THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

The Patten Report of 1999 provided recommendations for the future of policing in Northern Ireland, including the following recommendations in relation to IT:

• Carry out an urgent, independent, and in-depth strategic review of the use of IT in policing.
• Benchmark the PSNI against police services in the rest of the world and devise a properly resourced strategy that places them at the forefront of law enforcement technology within three to five years.
• The strategy should deliver fully integrated technology systems readily accessible to all staff, and should take advantage of the best analytical and communications systems currently available.
• These recommendations required PSNI to identify and implement modern systems that stood the test of international comparison. In 2002, after a worldwide search, PSNI selected Niche RMS as the core operational system to support crime, incident, property, intelligence, custody and case preparation. Implementation began in 2005 with the rollout of Custody. Case preparation rolled out in mid-2007, and all other components followed in 2008.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Successful delivery of the requirements of Causeway; information sharing between all the major criminal justice partners.
• Successful rollout of NicheRMS to meet the recommendations of the Patten Report.