THE POLICE DATA CHALLENGE Copyright Policing Insight/Cognyte 2023 some communities about how data is stored and used, and the ethical and privacy issues around how it is gathered and shared. The aim of this series of features is to get the thoughts and opinions of those involved in the policing data process – from practitioners past and present, to national leads, subject matter experts and academics – on the challenges around resources and technology (the focus for this first article), the potential for the latest tech to help police meet them, how law enforcement can ensure community buy-in, and the likely roadmap for the police use of data in intelligence and investigations over the next few years. Single point of truth For North Yorkshire Chief Constable Lisa Winward, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Intelligence Portfolio Lead, intelligence is “the lifeblood – the heart and brain” of policing. It’s also been an area of massive change over the past 25 years, in some cases prompted in the UK by the gaps that led to failings in major cases. For example, the introduction of the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – HOLMES – was in large part driven by the intelligence sharing failures in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, while the launch of the Police National Database (PND) to manage and share intelligence and data across force borders was a direct result of the Bichard Inquiry report into the intelligence failures associated with the Soham murders. But while those two developments evolved over decades, the current revolution in data collation and analysis is being driven by the speed of technological advancement, and the huge volumes of data those advances are creating, as CC Winward explained. “The two key factors for me are the volume and complexity of data and information, and the skills of the workforce,” said CC Winward. “The breadth and depth of information that exists in the world now is staggering. “There was an example when we first started talking about the downloading of victims’ phones, in the conversations around rape investigations, disclosure and ‘undressing the victim’ figuratively in terms of everything that’s on their telephone. “Somebody used the visual indicator that if you downloaded everything on some people’s phones, it would be a shipping container full of paper… so although that is held on a computer or on some sort of digital file, the challenge remains the same. “If you said to an investigator, ‘Go and look through every piece of paper in that container for one investigation for anything that might be disclosable or relevant’, that indicates the size of the task. Because it’s digital, people don’t see it in that scale; but when you actually visualise it in paper terms, it’s an impossible task.” That scale is highlighted by the huge and continuing growth of the PND – described by CC North Yorkshire Chief Constable Lisa Winward, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Intelligence Portfolio Lead