THE POLICE DATA CHALLENGE Copyright Policing Insight/Cognyte 2023 A joint decision was taken by policing and the Home Office in 2020 to remove the PND from the scope of the project, although Home Office Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft stated last year that the PND “is now being progressed as a separate dedicated programme”. And policing’s own Centre for Data and Analytics in Policing (CDAP), launched last year as part of the NPCC’s Digital, Data and Technology workstream under Portfolio Lead and then-Durham Chief Constable Jo Farrell, has a broad remit which includes building analytical capability and borderless data sharing. But whether that’s the PND or an alternative product, using new technology such as AI and machine learning would appear to be crucial in meeting the size and complexity of the data challenge. And for that to be successful, then data quality and consistency becomes even more important. One person who understands this better than most is Dylan Alldridge, Head of Innovation at the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser, who believes that while it’s “easy to get distracted by technology and the zeitgeist”, with AI being the current prime example, “we cannot get away from the fact that the fundamentals around data in policing need sorting”. “Our ability to utilise machine learning and AI across national data in the future will be largely predicated on our data being of sufficient quality – and not just quality, but sufficient consistency,” said Dylan. “So that’s about the way it is designed, the taxonomies, the cataloguing of the data force to force and across national systems. There are 250 source systems that feed into the PND; just the architecture that has to go into being able to ingest those data sources is considerable, let alone actually the fact that there is varying quality and consistency and structure of the data at source.” Addressing those data foundations will also help policing to tackle some of the other key challenges, such as ‘swivel chair syndrome’, where staff rekey the same data into non- integrated systems, and silo working. Increased accessibility and a “really decentralised set of capabilities” – using local innovation to create clean, consistent data that can be searched more widely – and making the best use of cloud computing capabilities will also mean data can be held more simply and safely in fewer locations. “It’s not just about how we can get away from swivel chair syndrome, but how can an analyst in a force or ROCU [regional organised crime unit] or agency log in once, on one “It’s not just about how we can get away from swivel chair syndrome, but how can an analyst in a force or ROCU or agency log in once, on one screen, and do federated natural language searching across all the available data?” Dylan Alldridge Head of Innovation, Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser Dylan Alldridge, Head of Innovation at the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser