Tags: Police

A Promising Year Beckons

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Joint CEO and Sales Director Mark Winstone sends out a message of best wishes for 2018

As we come to the end of a very interesting year for the NHS, the Police and general business – in the context of Brexit, on-going digitisation of society and a less predictable international scene, it’s time to reflect on where we are.

What we see and hear from our many NHS, Police and enterprise customers is that while there have been issues for many in the economy, especially for those in the public sector facing austerity, we get a sense that there are signs of real progress.

There has been progress for our customers in trying to get closer to the digital NHS sought (and which will be the best-organised NHS in terms of budget pressure and meeting the demands of a changing society and healthcare environment). We have been working for some time with a large teaching hospital in the North East, for example, that is resulting in a proof of concept demonstrator of ground-breaking medical records sharing.

That project in turn connects up with our work and interest in the Great North Care Record initiative.

This is also even more the case now that we have opened up a new line of business with another important partner, our new Intelligent Metadata Layer proposition (see my last blog : Meet IML – The New Single Window On ALL Your Corporate Information LINK]). That will soon open into a strong business for us – in the same way as our health business powered by Open Source in the form of the Alfresco platform has been introduced into so many NHS Trusts up and down the country. While being talked about for years and not happening enough, at last we are seeing real achievement in the area of connecting DICOM Vendor Neutral Archives with EPRs.

There is also great work commencing in digital Policing and SynApps is at the heart of three hugely important business-social-legal areas of interesting and important work: helping the NHS do a better job, helping the Forces to be more effective in delivering justice and protecting citizen rights, and aiding enterprises make information more productive and useful for them via IML.

SynApps has also entered into an exciting partnership with AWS to enable quick to deploy, low cost, scalable, secure ECM “solutions as a service” with the content residing in the UK.

We see 2018 as being a really promising year for us commercially and we are looking forward to the chance to opening up a dialogue about all the great opportunities with you, our customers, in the next 12 months.

A big seasonal thank you to all our staff, partners and most of all customers – and all good wishes for 2018!

Mark

Bridging The Digital Policing Gap With Tech-Enabled Evidence Management

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SynApps’ Joint MD Mark Winstone has been troubled by HMIC’s recent assessment of just how much Forces are struggling with the mounting digital evidence backlog

“Digital forensic capability and capacity is not keeping up with demand… variation in the extent to which forces have backlogs in digital examinations… the Police service is still learning how to make best use of digital engagement… We have seen a greater range of problems and weaknesses in crime investigation and offender management than last year, including the ability to retrieve digital evidence from digital devices such as mobile phones and laptops.”

A harsh assessment.

The words aren’t mine. They’re from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which in March published a hard-hitting probe into how behind too many regional Forces actually are.

Two of the biggest problems the HMIC identified in delivering PEEL, (Police Effectiveness, Efficiency and Legitimacy): insufficient internal capacity or capability (skills) stopping teams getting to grips with digital investigative opportunity. It’s not just skills, it’s a lack of resource and efficient processes; the Inspectorate says that there were no less than 16,000 digital devices (mobile phones or laptops) awaiting examination for live cases. Thankfully, the majority, 75% of them had been sitting on shelves for less than three months – but 5% had been languishing for over 12.

The report gives credit where credit is due, saying that management knows this backlog is harmful, and is trying to throw overtime and outsourcing at the problem. But the report says this is unsustainable long term, and a better approach would be to embrace new technologies in order to create new workflows to stop these blockages building up.

“Most forces have not yet explored fully the use of new and emerging techniques and analysis to direct operational activity at a local level,” the report states.

“Innovative analytical techniques should be used to help the service make decisions about where to target resources,” it goes on.

Action has to be taken – and now

The problem is that this isn’t the first time we’re going to hear this advice – nor probably the last.

Only last November, ACPO and the National Police Chiefs’ Council issued an imaginative set of proposals, Policing Vision 2025, which said staff skills would be boosted, digital evidence shared more effectively and there should be more digital recording and analysis of online crime, delivered through better sharing of back office resources, integration/consolidation of systems and improved analytical capabilities of team members.

The message of both the HMIC and Policing Vision 2025 studies is that the service knows that digital is here, knows that there’s pressure to do something about it – but that hard-pressed Chief Inspectors need some practical help to move forward.

SynApps can help address the digital evidence challenge

We’ve been hearing this message from our many Force users. Which is why we’ve been working to help.

You’ll be aware that we’ve been making headway on integrated tools to help Police transition to the new era of fully Digital Justice with our Evidence Management platform.

If any of the problems identified by the Inspectorate are true for your Force, our team are ready today to help bridge the gap from where you are now to the kind of digital Policing stakeholders and the public want.

Mark

Mark Winstone is Joint CEO and Sales & Marketing Director at SynApps Solutions

Digital Crime Prevention Trends: How SynApps Can Help

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Some recent trends highlight very well the kind of route of travel that British Policing is heading in, and which we are increasingly relevant to. The first is the rise of the rise of cybercrime. This danger is recognised at Cabinet level, with the government announcing a National Cybersecurity Strategy, as is the setting up of the country’s National Crime Unit, a body actively engaged in providing a powerful and highly visible investigative response to the most serious incidents of cybercrime.

This work is being done at the individual Force level too – and as a recent piece in The Telegraph points out, “Forces are turning to cutting-edge technology to move the odds in their favour.”

A great example is body-worn cameras, a technology that will allow the Police to address community concerns about invasive techniques, potentially reallocate resources to more productive tasks, but also provide useful video evidence for trials.

Last but not least, the setting up of a national, unified Police ICT Company for the UK in March 2015 means that useful technology like body-worn cameras and other digital aids come much higher up the agenda for the sector than ever before.

This context of change is what’s driving some of the work we’re carrying out with multiple Forces round the country, and which we plan to reveal more of very soon.

Read the blog for yourself here

SynApps Lays Out A Vision Of A Fully Digital Police Process

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In a recent blog article, SynApps revealed another exciting solution for the public sector it’s working on with its customers – this time, in law enforcement.

The Police are always watching the clock when they get a suspect to the station, and it’s a clock that can’t be bargained with, either. As the hit Channel 4 show has shown us, 24 hours (longer if it’s a serious crime or a terrorist act) sounds like a long time, but just isn’t; the race us on to get a case assembled, witnesses and suspect interviewed, liaison with the CPS has to happen, and so on.

What’s more, as digital evidence is becoming more and more central to modern law enforcement, the sector’s entering the era of even more CCTV, body-worn cameras on officers, evidence gathered by iPhone or digital camera, and so forth.

As a result, the company foresees, the sector’s going to have to find ways to properly manage, store and, crucially, search and properly label and timestamp, such digital evidence. Which is where modern content management comes in, in the shape of what SynApps and our tech partners can offer. That’s because ECM is the missing link in digital evidence management in terms of what’s needed to capture, move, search, store and systematically archive such important material – and achieve the fully joined up digital justice system the Crown, public and Police themselves know we all need.

Read the longer version of this vision here

SynApps To Launch A Full Evidence Management System To Help Police Deliver Modern Digital Justice

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Content management firm’s integrated digital interview solution is being evolved into a full evidence management system in collaboration with key technology partners

Hatfield, UK, 31 January, 2017 – Content management leader SynApps Solutions is to evolve its SynApps-developed digital interview solution into a full evidence management system in order to help UK Police meet the growing digital evidence requirement in modern law enforcement.

Built on a market leading Enterprise Content Management platform and open standards support for multiple data formats, including open source, available on-premise or cloud, the new Evidence Management solution will offer Chief Constables ways to work with content of all types.

Such a comprehensive solution is needed as it will be a key aid in transitioning to digital evidence management, providing a chain of digital evidence, from fingerprints to sound and video recordings, for the Police, the CPS, and other stakeholders in modern digital justice.

The platform can “evidence enable” existing policing systems providing officers with an immediate and complete view of the case.

“We are witnessing growing demand for modern content management solutions by our Police customers,” confirmed SynApps’s Joint CEO and Sales & Marketing Director Mark Winstone.

“Digital evidence is increasingly central with the police being expected to manage, store, search, properly label and timestamp evidence for their use as well as today’s digital citizenry,” he added.

The Home Office has highlighted the need for a comprehensive and joined up programme of digital transformation, SynApps points out, which will be difficult to deliver with manual and paper-based systems.

“We are working closely with our partners and Forces to properly understand and meet the challenges they face from the demand for digital evidence management,” he said.

The SynApps delivered and developed Evidence Management solution promises

• A secure “pick-up” server for loosely coupled integration with existing and future capture devices
• Digital fingerprinting to maintain evidential weight
• An Open API for closer integration with existing capture devices
• The ability to store and manage any digital evidence, regardless of format or size
• A way to “Evidence enable” existing policing systems
• Comprehensive CCTV codec support
• Annotation and redaction support
• Retention and Records Management
• Secure content transfer portal with CPS or other agencies.

To find out more about how SynApps can assist your Force in managing data, get in touch. You can also read our most recent article on the announcement here.

About SynApps
SynApps is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. Founded in 2003 by former Documentum services professionals, the company provides consultancy, implementation and support services for EMC Documentum and Alfresco, and has authored a suite of content integration solutions, ConXApps, that allow businesses to quickly maximise their investment in ECM technologies. Organisations across healthcare, government and commercial markets rely on SynApps solutions and services to capture and share knowledge more dynamically and efficiently.

Find out more here, or follow the firm on Twitter @Synappssol

24 Hours In Tomorrow’s Digital Police Station


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Mark Winstone reveals another exciting solution for the public sector SynApps is working on with its customers – this time, in the Police sector

I want to briefly talk to you about some work we’re doing in one of our core markets, that of Police, which we’ve worked in for about seven or eight years now. I can’t go into as much detail as I’d like to, as some of the specifics are still being worked out. So what I can say is fairly ‘top level’ – but suggestive of the route of travel here.

It’s an interesting route of travel. Rather like the exciting work we’ve talked about in the NHS, it’s about us helping real-world organisations on the policing frontline solve real problems with our content management technology. And like that NHS work, it’s early days – but we think we’re on to something deeply practical.

What we’re trying to be practical about is the problem of time. The Police are always watching the clock when they get a suspect to the station, and it’s a clock that can’t be bargained with, either. If you’ve seen 24 Hours In Police Custody, this will be familiar to you.

The basic issue is that the Police have only so long to work with a suspect. Under the law, the Police can only hold someone for up to 24 hours before they have to charge them with a crime or release them (though they can apply to hold an individual for up to 36 or 96 hours if they’re suspected of a serious crime, e.g. murder, and you can be held without charge for up to 14 days If you’re arrested under the Terrorism Act (see here).

That sounds like a long time, but it isn’t; a case needs to be assembled, witnesses interviewed, as well as the suspect with their solicitor, and so on. Now, don’t think all anyone wants here is to press charges. Bringing cases to trial that can’t be won is a waste of time and resources; quickly having solid proof that this is the wrong line of enquiry gets the police back out on the beat quicker than finding the actual culprit; keeping someone in a cell for longer than they need is expensive and unhelpful. Accurate Policing is better for everyone – and quick and accurate is best of all.

Looking after digital evidence right is best for all of us, when you think about it

But what’s been really dogging many Forces is the added, needless complication of processing the digital evidence component of all this.

That matters, as digital evidence is becoming more and more central to modern law enforcement. As we move into an era of even more CCTV, body worn cameras on officers, evidence gathered by iPhone or digital camera, etc., then we’re going to have to find ways to properly manage, store and, crucially, search and properly label and timestamp, such digital evidence – for both the Police, the Courts and, critically, for all of us as digital citizens.

At the same time, in March the Home Office published a set of proposals for modern Police effectiveness that highlighted the growing importance of the electronic aspect of investigation and the need for “a comprehensive and joined up programme of digital transformation across policing” (see Modern Crime Prevention Strategy).

But if you have a system where you are trying to share files on DVD, manually, then this is time consuming and costly taking officers away from front line policing – which is not doing the best for the safety of the public or enabling officers to get better outcomes during an investigation. You’re also not doing the job the taxpayer really deserves if you aren’t efficiently storing or managing evidence, which may of course become crucial months, even years, down the line if there’s a break in a cold case or allegation of injustice. You want good chain of evidence, ideally from the first time the authorities get involved to historic file evidence, from a digital fingerprint to sound and video recordings of interviews, and so on: this is no less than we’re all entitled to expect in 2017, as it’s the most efficient way of delivering real 21st-century justice.

SynApps: the public sector partner

So better ways of working with digital evidence is something wanted by both Forces (as management of such evidence is their responsibility), the CPS and the government (in the shape of the Home Office and its agencies). And this is where modern content management comes in, in the shape of what SynApps and our tech partners can offer, as ECM is what is needed here to capture, move, search, store and systematically archive such important material.

I’m delighted to say that very soon just such a solution will be on the market. It’s a new integrated SynApps-delivered digital interview solution that we’ve developed for one Force that is being evolved into a full evidence management system in collaboration with some other technology partners.

Together with the great work we’re doing for the NHS around IDCR, the work SynApps is doing in digital Policing underlines how much we support the public sector, as well as how much our approach solves genuine problems here too.

Mark

Mark Winstone is Joint SynApps CEO and Sales & Marketing Director