Summary
Challenges
- The need to record, store, retrieve and replay telephone calls and the radio communications for 110,000 officers
- Modernise and Upgrade 114 control rooms and 400 smaller control rooms spread out across the country
- Future-proof emergency communications recording architecture for further enhancements
NICE solution
- NICE Inform
The impact
- Ability to now manage the national infrastructure centrally at the headquarters in Rome
- Instant access to high quality audio files, to support our emergency response, conduct investigations and submit as evidence
- A robust solution with guaranteed network stability and proven reliability
Founded in 1814, the Carabinieri (Arma dei Carabinieri) is a police force in Italy with military status. It reports directly to the Ministry of Defense and conducts military police duties for other armed forces, provides security of Italian diplomatic missions abroad, and supports the Ministry of Interior in activities related to inland public order and security. With 110,000 sworn officers, the Carabinieri is one of four national forces that also includes the Polizia di Stato, Polizia Penitenziaria and Guardia di Finanza that police Italy.
The Carabinieri are instantly recognisable on the streets of Italy, with their blue uniforms and vehicles that feature a bold red stripe. Dial 112 in an emergency and the Carabinieri, along with the Polizia di Stato are responsible for providing a response.
The Challenge
The Carabinieri operates from its Rome headquarters and has a further 114 control rooms and 400 smaller control rooms spread out across the country. Central to this large and complex infrastructure is the ability to record, store, retrieve and replay telephone calls and the radio communications of its 110,000 officers, across 800 telephone and analogue radio channels.
One of the biggest challenges was recording and sending the radio communications from the smaller local control rooms to the central site which had become problematic due to continuous start/stop signals sent on a very large geographic network. These recordings are vital when managing incidents, conducting investigations, and preparing evidence. They can also be used during officer and operator training.
Ensuring the optimal operation of this intricate recording infrastructure is RES – Recording Enterprise Solutions, a NICE Gold Partner with offices in Milan and Rome, and who has been a trusted partner of the Carabinieri and many other public safety customers throughout Italy for many years. When the force took the decision to upgrade and build a new future-proof emergency communications recording architecture, it was NICE and RES that the Carabinieri entrusted with delivering the project.
The Solution
RES needed to develop a recording solution for the specific requirements of the Carabinieri which allowed them to centralise the recording in the HQ using VoIP and thus removing the “start/stop” issues and improving the solution stability.
Sales Manager at RES, Daniele Caracci, explains: “Nothing less than a 100% guarantee that all telephone and radio communications can be recorded, stored and replayed would be acceptable. The only solution we would trust with a project of this scale and complexity was NICE Inform.”
With RES and NICE Inform we are building a robust and reliable system that will enable all Carabinieri operators to instantly access high-quality audio files, to support emergency response, conduct investigations and submit as evidence.”
Project manager
NICE Inform is developed by NICE, a market-leader in public safety solutions that is trusted by more than 3,000 agencies including police, fire and ambulance services around the world. It helps by connecting to all of the different systems in the emergency communications centre ecosystem and captures all of the incident information – for telephony and radio – in one place to give operational intelligence that help to make lasting improvements. Providing emergency communication managers with a consolidated solution, it brings all of their data together, so they can better understand what happened, how it happened, what performed, and what’s happening now.
The project began in 2023 with the rollout of NICE Inform across all 114 main control rooms. Due to the critical nature of the Carabinieri’s emergency communications, the move to the new architecture and NICE Inform would need to be seamless, as Caracci explains: “We are in the process of upgrading hardware, software and databases at each site. This must be done whilst guaranteeing an uninterrupted service, meaning all existing telephone and radio recordings must be able to be retrieved and replayed throughout the transition to the new system.”
Once deployed NICE Inform provides the local Carabinieri with a single point of truth via a desktop interface from which they can rapidly retrieve and replay the communications it has with the public, as well as its officer communications. Furthermore, with the main sites connected to staff at the Carabinieri headquarters in Rome they have instant access to the audio communications from all sites.”
The upgrade was scheduled to be fully operational before the end of 2023 and will provide this vitally important piece of national infrastructure with a greatly improved, stable and future proofed nationwide recording solution.
The project manager stated: “With RES and NICE Inform we are building a robust and reliable system that will enable all Carabinieri operators to instantly access high-quality audio files, to support emergency response, conduct investigations and submit as evidence.”
About NICE Public Safety
With over 3000 customers and 30 years’ experience, NICE’s solutions deliver digital transformation, improved collaboration, efficiency and cost-savings to all types of public safety and criminal justice agencies, from emergency communications centres and police forces, to prosecutors, defence solicitors and courts.
Our Evidencentral platform (which includes NICE Inform, NICE Investigate and NICE Justice) features an ecosystem of integrated technologies that bring data together to improve incident response, accelerate investigations, streamline evidence disclosure, enhance digital collaboration with justice partners, and keep communities and citizens safer.
To find out more visit www.nicepublicsafety.com or contact us at [email protected]
