FEATURE: As police leaders and practitioners, government and industry prepare to gather for this week’s Police Digital Summit, Martyn Underhill, a former police officer and police and crime commissioner who is now a consultant on policing issues, reflects on a similar Cityforum summit from earlier in the summer which focused on the challenges, progress and future potential for the police delivery of digital forensics.

OPINION: Metropolitan Police Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer Darren Scates recently completed his two-year tenure as Chair of the UK’s National Police Technology Council; in this article he looks back at the significant and rapid changes during that period, and looks ahead at the opportunities for innovation facing policing, both in the short and longer term.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: The National Policing Digital Strategy 2020-2030 recommends that forces take a cloud-first approach to applications and data. Join this webinar on 24th February 2021 to learn more about the police assured mission accelerator developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Police ICT Company, and the National Police Technology Council. which helps forces to migrate workloads and deploy services quickly and securely to the cloud.

FEATURE: Bringing forces, chief constables, PCCs, the Home Office and suppliers together to unite behind the Police National Digital Strategy will be ‘complicated’, NPCC Chair Martin Hewitt told this week’s Police Digital Summit; but delivering the Strategy is essential if policing is to retain legitimacy with the public.

Analysis: The latest in our Report Watch series summarises the National Digital Policing Strategy 2020-2030 which was officially launched at this year's Police ICT Summit. The Strategy sets out a new digital ambition for UK policing.

OPINION: The UK's first ever National Policing Digital Strategy was launched at the recent Police ICT Summit. Director of the National Enabling Programmes and Chair of the National Police Technology Council Wayne Parkes explores the reasons for the strategy, its ambitions, and how it can be delivered.

INSIGHT: This week’s Police ICT Summit will see suppliers, police buyers and stakeholders discuss current challenges and develop solutions. But where are the voices of the end users in this process? And could a greater focus on user experience help to solve existing challenges as well as develop more effective long-term solutions?

opinion: There are 43 Home Office ‘funded’ police forces in England and Wales out of a total of around 50 law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom. Darren Scates, Chief Technology Officer for the Metropolitan Police Service, offers his personal view on how to deliver technology more effectively in this distributed environment, and asks: "Can we increase the success rate of projects and programmes?"

OPINION: Last week, police leaders and ICT suppliers gathered for the two-day Police ICT Summit 2019 in Hinckley, Leicestershire which attracted over 300 delegates. Based on the presentations, one of those delegates has sent us their 'end-of-conference' progress report on the state of Police ICT.

OPINION: The strain on police efficiencies is greater than ever, with one of its key contributory factors - siloed data - potentially costing police officers up to 28 days of productivity a year. Coeus Software’s CEO Simon Hall explores the effect of this and how the latest cloud and mobile technology developments, changing software procurement practices and wider digitisation in policing can help the frontline.

ANALYSIS: In the second of three extracts from Vigilant Research’s latest in depth report on police technology futures, Director Stephen Roberts examines futures capability in other public sectors.

Analysis: Vigilant Research's latest report launched this week examines the current police technology futures landscape and offers a set of objectives towards a centralised police technology futures capability. In the first of three articles, Director of Vigilant Research Stephen Roberts explores the current state of police technology futures operations.

ANALYSIS: CoPaCC's Police ICT User Survey had its first public airing this month when CEO Bernard Rix presented its findings to a conference of police ICT suppliers. But what can the service and suppliers learn from the results of the survey?   

Analysis: The results from UK policing's first independent ICT User Survey - published today - are already having a positive impact thanks to the quality of the data, but it is just the beginning of the journey, according to the police associations that have lent their support to the survey.

Analysis: The new Strategic Principles for Police ICT make good common sense, and are hard to argue against.  We can all agree on the importance of interoperability, good management of data, user-friendliness, and the ability to switch across different platforms.  Efficiency, effectiveness; a rounded view of value for money; future proofing: what’s not to like? Yet the principles also present challenges, and following them will not be straightforward, explains former Greater Manchester Police ACC Ian Wiggett.

Analysis: The recently-published ICT Strategy, drawn up by the National Police Technology Council (NPTC), contains 26 principles designed to guide forces through their approach to ICT. But, when 43 police forces in England and Wales have 2,000 separate ICT systems, can it succeed?