The Metropolitan Police's director of information has warned that
the force could struggle to meet the deadlines for police
intelligence sharing set out by the Home Office.
A timetable for introducing information sharing between forces and
for a full national intelligence system was laid down after the
Bichard Inquiry into the murder of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells
and Jessica Chapman.
I-PLX, a national index of people on whom police forces hold
information, is due to be available by the end of this year and
should be in full use by September 2006, according to the Police IT
Organisation, which is managing its introduction.
However, Ailsa Beaton, the Met's director of information, said,
"Ideally we would provide every bit of information that we have got
about everyone into this national nominal index."
She added that the Met has got the information and can work with
it, but it has "significant work to do" to be able to make this
data available to other systems. The Met has several million files,
with much of its data held in free text fields, and it is not
always simple to extract.
Emphasising her commitment to meet the information sharing
requirements, Beaton said, "One of the big issues for us is around
funding. It is all very well for people to come up with
recommendations about what we need to do, but where is the money
coming from?"
Once I-PLX is rolled out, police forces are expected to implement a
national intelligence system, dubbed Impact, which is currently at
the planning stage.
Information and intelligence are vital to the Met, said Beaton.
"But we have never had the information strategy, the investment or
the infrastructure to be able to put the kind of systems in place
that you need to have all the information that you have got at your
finger tips and be able to deliver that to where it is
needed."
This could mean accepting national systems will be easier for the
Met than other forces which already have advanced systems in place,
she added.