Small things matter: a story of bears and alligators

“When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to forget that you came to drain the swamp.”

This phrase - of uncertain origin – or any of its many variants, encapsulates one of the great challenges of life in a modern organisation: finding time to do the important things when the urgent things are so time consuming and difficult to ignore.

The challenges facing leaders in policing technology are no exception. There are many urgent issues. These include, but aren’t limited to:

• the need to manage an explosion in police data storage requirements;

• the need to achieve a viable solution to the problems and opportunities presented by developing biometric capabilities;

• arrangements to replace the 44 year-old Police National Computer;

• delivering the troubled Emergency Services Network; and,

• achieving an answer to the question of digital evidence – which exists in multiple independent silos and proves more difficult to manage with every passing day.

Efforts to resolve these issues have not always been helped by the structure and governance of the police service – whilst acknowledging the strengths of that structure in delivering other priorities. Similarly, the level of resourcing and the way resources have been distributed have favoured other priorities over back office "swamp clearance".

But there are two fundamental risks associated with under-investment in technology around policing. The first is that a day of reckoning will come in the end. In this scenario – in which policing is by no means unusual – the infrastructure becomes increasingly creaky and the gap between what staff get to use at work and what they have at home becomes so wide, that something snaps. This could be a technological failure or a collapse in user confidence (propelling users to use their own personal technology as a substitute for work equipment to the maximum possible extent). Neither scenario is healthy or appealing.

... with the threat of terrorism at a historically high level and with new forms of criminality and demand emerging all the time, society needs to ensure that law enforcement capitalises on new capabilities with speed and imagination.

The other risk surrounds missed opportunity. We know – and the media take great delight in reminding us - that there are criminals out there who are making increasing use of cutting edge technologies for criminal purposes. History teaches us that law enforcement is always a little way behind the most nimble, agile and creative organised crime networks. But the size of the gap can vary. And, with the threat of terrorism at a historically high level and with new forms of criminality and demand emerging all the time, society needs to ensure that law enforcement capitalises on new capabilities with speed and imagination. In this way, the gap can be kept to a minimum.

Video analytics, digital visualisation, facial recognition, predictive mapping, intelligent fast-searching of data sources including video, self-teaching computers..... These are no longer the stuff of science fiction, but capabilities that are available today and improving every day. The technology industry needs to be ready to listen, to understand the needs of law enforcement and to help. And techUK could play a pivotal role in facilitating the conversations that need to take place to promote a team effort to keep us all safe.

The alternative – reminiscent of the alligators in the swamp – is described by AA Milne in the opening words of Winnie the Pooh:

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”

This blog was first published as part of techUK's Security & Law Enforcement Campaign Week.