Case Study (PITO)

 

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.