In today’s post, we will talk about the vision for the police of the United Kingdom in 2025. This vision was put into place to offer a more consistent police service throughout the UK. There are a couple of changes which are ahead for Policing which this article will discuss in-depth. Nevertheless, there are exciting times ahead for police officers.
The current situation
The UK, has a total of 317 Districts distributed over approximately 242,495 square kilometres. They are divided into 43 Policing districts covering the UK. It is quite a large area to control and is not easy at all. Nonetheless, budget cuts to keep national debt low reduced the Police force by an astonishing 40% since 2010 (BBC, 2018). This has also reflected in the criminality rate which has grown significantly, today 95 people out of 1000 are affected by crime. In 2010 the number was significantly lower with 79 people out of 1000.
The logical connection is that these police officers have their hands full. The Policing Vision 2025 was composed due to many inefficiencies present in the current system. These Policing districts would not implement infrastructures to benefit from each other. This resulted in double costs with the money better invested in an additional police officers.
2025 Policing Vision
The requirements which should be met and implemented until 2025 are as follows.
- Working with the Police IT Company to prioritise investment in developing common data standards and encouraging national approaches to technology investment.
- Exploring wider opportunities of working with partner agencies on issues such as management of offender rehabilitation or improving cohesion and delivery across the criminal justice system.
- Realising economies of scale through consolidation of business support functions into cross-force units, working to common standards
- Enabling greater joint working between local authorities, emergency services and local police forces, including formal integration of back-office functions
- Delivering savings by undertaking more shared procurement.
Imbedded in the 2025 Policing vision there is the so-called National Enabling Programmes. This program will implement the subjects of productivity services, identity and access management and a national data management centre. This programme in simple words revolve around the IT business processes regarding the Police force. Here they are broken down.
Productivity Services
Implementing cloud-based solutions for increasing effectiveness and improve communications between different departments. This tool will incentivise clear and easy information sharing cutting down on miscommunication between other forces. This leaves officers more time as they don’t have to go through the pain of searching for information which another colleague or another force has used for a particular case. Additionally, officers and staff can then make use of different devices to access data as well as hold meeting remotely.
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
This will enable individuals working for the organisation to have access to local, regional and national resources. This access is granted on multiple devices and locations without compromising security. Through the use of Single Sign-On (SSO), the user will be able to seamlessly login once and get access across different connected systems without the need to log in every time they want to switch between services and applications. To other Police forces in Europe, this proved to increase efficiencies while officers are working. More to the use case below.
National Management Centre
The goal of the National Management Centre is to secure the infrastructure and assets, monitor forces and help mitigate security risks. This service will provide monitoring and response coordination, in this way forces can prevent cyber attacks,have contingency plans in place and prevent data loss. This new add-on to the UK police force will allow to apply economies of scale, as one service will be used instead of every Police district having to invest in their own cyber security solutions. Through the improvement of IT infrastructure nationwide, officers can make use of technology to facilitate operations and the government/district can retrieve financial benefit from it.
Australian Police switched already to Mobile Devices
Queensland Police says since they have switched from bulky computers, radios and paper-work to a digital and mobile work world, they have seen savings of 30 minutes per officer per shift around administration work. This equates to 600,000 hours a year which now can be used to make the streets of the towns more secure.
As we work closely with Single Sign-On solutions we prepared a use case for the police.
Police Use Case
Our helper and friend in difficult times. The policeman is an important cornerstone of our society. They have an important job, namely, to keep order. A police officer’s job is already hard enough and the whole digital revolution has an impact on them on a daily basis. In today’s world, threats are on the rise and therefore the Police need to establish fast and easy ways to act. Traditionally, all Police paperwork was done manually. For instance, you had a small accident with your car, no one was hurt but in most countries, you have to involve the police to make a case for insurance. The police used to take notes of what happened and at the end of the day, all information collected used to be digitalised in an office which had access to a computer. This caused additional workload as reports needed to be rewritten digitally. Hence the police have, over the course of time implemented mobile solutions. Take the Netherlands for example. Every police agent has a mobile device with different kinds of applications to access data or file reports digitally so processes can happen easier and time-efficient.
However, we have not yet achieved the most time-efficient way to access these applications. Police officers often arrive at an incident and have to first log into the desired applications. This adds unnecessary additional time to a scenario where there was already very little.
Such time constraints may be accidents on highways where the route is completely blocked and costing commuters or logistics a lot of money. In such stressful situations, the Police needs to act fast and have a smooth process in place. This means every minute wasted on something not related to policing can cause huge disruptions. Implementing technology for this industry is a great step forward for innovation and can have huge benefits. However, such small issues as mentioned before can be eliminated by Hypergate which will do the work for the police officers. The officer does not need to log in manually anymore as with Hypergate’s certificate authenticator,therefore they will have immediate and direct access to all of the desired applications.
Sailpoint with Hypergate
If you are reading this you may ask yourself why use Hypergate when we already have Sailpoint which can do this. Well this is not completely true as sailpoint acts only as a management tool authorizing access to different groups depending on the admin’s decision. If you rely on Android for your service sailpoint is not able to close the kerberos gap which leaves you with the same issue of having to input passwords. Hypergate in this case acts as a complementary tool to sailpoint and would resolve this issue.
Furthermore, Hypergate can help your officers to become truly mobile by letting you change and reset your password directly on their device – No access to a computer needed.
There is a real cost benefit associated with Hypergate that’s why we have created a cost calculator which illustrates how much your business can save with the help of Hypergate.
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Don’t take our word for it, read the success story of one of our clients. If we have caught your attention and you are also ready to save time, costs and be truly mobile, check out our website under hypergate.com.
With just a few clicks you can request a quote or demo which one of our sales specialists will gladly tailor to your needs.
Hypergate Files
Is a very simple file browser that provides seamless access to on-premise network shares. Let your users collaborate freely with their teams and edit all files directly on their mobile devices. All file types are supported by their native apps, no special viewer, editor or custom implementation, just pure usability.
Hypergate Authenticator
Delivers a seamless and secure Single Sign-On solution integrating directly with Active Directory. The solution leverages industry standards like Kerberos to provide the best possible user experience without compromising on security. Save IT support costs by allowing your users to change or reset their expired passwords on their own devices, no computer needed.
