Biometrics in UK policing
Client: Police Information Technology Organisation
(PITO)
Background/Objectives
Effective person identification is becoming increasingly
central to UK Government Home Office strategy in a number of areas, including
law enforcement. Working with the Police Information Technology Organisation
(PITO), we built the biometric technology roadmap (TRM) for person
identification within UK policing. The aim was to provide the police with a
focussed long-term view of biometrics and highlight areas where specific action
is necessary in order to ensure the technology can be harnessed in time to meet
their needs.
The most pressing need identified by the biometric TRM
was for a facial images national database (FIND) for sharing of criminal facial
images. We were engaged by PITO to evaluate options for the deployment of
FIND.
Approach and Benefits to Client
Initially, in order to build this biometric TRM for
PITO, key stakeholders were identified by consultation with PITO in order to
ensure that the right people were involved. These stakeholders were interviewed
in order to determine the requirements for person identification within
policing; short, medium and long term. The requirements obtained were documented
and cross-referenced with the following 'strategic mandate' documents to ensure
that they could be justified in the context of PITO's current remit.
In particular the roadmap assists in the meeting of
PITO's objectives to:
- develop, procure and manage delivery of national information technology
and communications systems in support of effective policing
- determine in partnership with the police service their corporate
requirements for information and communications systems
- advise Ministers, as necessary, on the exercise of their powers to
regulate the use by police forces of information technology equipment or
systems.
- clarify the rate-determining steps (e.g. research or legislation not being
in place) and highlight opportunities for increased effort to reduce critical
timescales.
We approached the subsequent FIND deployment options
assignment by conducting the following tasks:
- requirements gathering
- technology survey. We used our team's expertise and the requirements
gathered from PITO stakeholders to determine which technologies might be used
in the deployment of FIND
- define candidate architectures. Each of the viable architectures was
scored by the team members against number of weighted criteria
- cost-benefit analysis. The relative costs and benefits for each of the
candidate architectures were presented and recommendations made for a single
architecture for the FIND deployment. We worked with PITO to feed out analysis
into their Business Case for FIND.
Benefits of the PITO FIND deployment options study
include:
- independent expert analysis from a team proven on the PITO biometrics TRM
as well as the IND biometrics framework
- a cost model spreadsheet with user interface allowing PITO to conduct
"what-if" analyses on the deployment architecture options examined.