Digital Transformation in Policing and Justice

Around the world, the technology used by frontline police officers and support teams is having to change, and fast.

Today, citizens want the ability to engage with police and justice organisations online and through digital communication tools. Likewise, police officers expect to have access to innovative technologies to support their investigations, pursue criminals, protect the vulnerable, and reduce crime.

Traditionally the police have relied on outdated, siloed, on-premises technologies, which usually come with a hefty upfront price tag. The accelerating adoption of cloud computing on the other hand, offers instant access to the very latest, secure infrastructure, low-cost storage, machine learning, and data analysis on a “pay only for what you use” basis. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud in particular is the most feature-rich and most widely adopted cloud anywhere in the world. Ireland is home to one of the first AWS regions built outside the USA. Because of this, the Irish public sector is well positioned to adopt public cloud while ensuring data remains in the jurisdiction and fulfils data sovereignty requirements.

For instance, AWS provided the Health Service Executive (HSE) with the underlying cloud infrastructure for the Covid-19 ‘Pandemic Response’ app. The primary purpose of the app is to enable the HSE to improve the speed, accuracy, and effectiveness of contract tracing. Working with AWS provided the HSE with a secure, scalable, and reliable solution that is hosted in Ireland and complies with international regulations and compliance standards including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Further afield, the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) also embraced the AWS Cloud to enhance the effectiveness, fairness, and quality of the services it provides to the public. They chose AWS after struggling to adapt rapidly enough to meet citizens’ and staff needs using their existing on-premises data centres. The result? Using AWS, the MoJ was able to reduce the cost and time taken to create and deliver new services securely. For example, the MoJ has reduced the time it takes to deliver feature enhancements and updates from more than six months per release in some cases, to multiple times a day. The MoJ is using AWS for a growing number of citizen-facing and staff services, with over 130 currently in production. These include an end-to-end prison visit booking system and a prisoner self-service application to help prisoners manage their affairs.

Camden County Police Department in New Jersey, USA, is also benefiting from the cloud helped by Mark43, a member of the AWS Partner Network (APN). The police department is using the AWS Cloud to enable first responders to collect, manage, analyse, search, and share information quickly and easily across its records management and computer-aided dispatch systems. As a result, the police department can process millions of records in a matter of minutes, better assess crime trends, and proactively allocate resources for information-led policing and investigations. Camden’s Director of Strategic Intelligence Analysis Kerry Yerico explains: “Through the cloud, we know what’s going on hour to hour and minute to minute and can adjust our deployments accordingly. If you have a strong data system, it removes a lot of the guesswork from first responders”.

The AWS Cloud is designed to meet the most stringent security requirements in the world. We monitor our infrastructure 24/7 to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our customers’ data.

Driving digital transformation

There are four factors to consider when driving digital transformation:

Security: Policing and justice agencies must adhere to strict policies regarding data storage, management, and retention. Records management, fingerprints, CCTV, interview recordings and body worn cameras are some examples of datasets that require secure storage and retention. In a testament to the security of the AWS Cloud, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Associate Deputy Director of Digital Innovation Sean Roche is on record as saying: “The cloud on its weakest day is more secure than a client-server solution. It’s transformed our ability to build new capabilities.”

The AWS Cloud is designed to meet the most stringent security requirements in the world. We monitor our infrastructure 24/7 to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our customers’ data. The same world-class security experts who monitor this infrastructure also build and maintain our innovative security services, helping customers comply with security or regulatory requirements, including GDPR.

Cost savings: Cloud computing is cost-effective compared with traditional, on-premises models. With public cloud, customers don’t have to lay out the capital up front for the servers and the data centres; instead they pay only for what they use on a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead of provisioning for peak usage in the cloud you just provision what you need; if it turns out you need less, you give it back and stop paying for it.

Another important consideration is the cost of data storage. In some cases, the duration for retention can be as long as 99 years. With AWS, lifecycle policies can be set to automatically select the most effective storage option to satisfy compliance and regulatory requirements. Using cold storage options, data can be stored for many years at the lowest possible cost.

Agility: One of the main reasons public and private sector organisations are moving to the public cloud is the agility they inherit. This agility puts a plethora of innovative services at their fingertips, to take them from idea to implementation faster than they could before. Customers can also experiment with new ways of working and quickly establish better processes. Within policing, the cloud can reduce administrative burdens by enhancing collaboration and connectivity. For example, police officers can upload and store data securely using the cloud, access records from wherever they are, and dictate and submit incident reports from the field, enabling them to be more efficient and more visible in the community.

Innovation: The future of policing and justice is all about being more connected, mobile, and agile. To support these new ways of working, police organisations need the ability to implement advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things, robotics and Artificial Intelligence to automate tasks and enhance their capabilities to respond to the public needs. The cloud enables police and justice organisations to accelerate the pace of innovation in a cost-effective manner, for example, new software and applications can be built rapidly in an agile way to support the changing needs of our police officers, the public, and how they interact.

In conclusion, no longer a technology of the future, the AWS Cloud is already enhancing data management, security, reducing costs, and providing solutions to accelerate innovation. By harnessing these services, police and justice organisations can realise the full potential for agility, data exchange, and collaboration. Therefore they can make more real-time decisions to serve and protect communities, when and where the public needs them the most.

If you want to learn more about how the AWS Cloud can help your organisation to innovate and digitally transform, please contact the Irish AWS Public Sector team.

E: aws-publicsector-ireland@amazon.com