Victoria Police plots data-driven intelligence overhaul

Victoria Police will equip its officers with a new intelligence platform that will deliver a single source of truth from the force’s broad IT landscape to aid a smarter response to domestic violence and gang crime.

Buoyed by $227 million in funding from this year’s state budget, the Victoria Police has approached the market for an intelligence management and analytics solution that will place information officers need for high-risk policing activities in their hands much faster and without manual effort.

Officers will be able to access a federated search tool supported by analytics capabilities to trawl through and interrogate data from 500 Victoria Police applications.

“This will remove siloed analytical outputs and the manual processes required to achieve these (such as geocoding coordinates before heat maps can be produced), and promote consistency when conducting analysis," the force said in tender documents.

The commercial-off-the-shelf solution will cut down the amount of time intelligence officers spend collating and analysing data while offering better quality insights, the force said.

By June 2017, Victoria Police hopes to support 600 concurrent users of the platform, accessing data from core platforms like LEAP, the iFace facial recognition system, the sex offenders registry, the licensing and regulation system, and the Interpose case management database.

Officers will also have access to open source intelligence tools and social media through the new application by June next year, the force expects.

The second phase of the rollout will see the user base increase to 5200 officers, and the platform extended to the CAD and automatic number plate recognition systems, as well as the road policing drug and alcohol database.

Integration with VicPol’s Oracle financial system, Outlook, HR Assist, and property laboratory management platform - as well as a line into the Australian Crime Commission - will be complete by 2019 when the project is scheduled to wrap up.

The force is offering a seven-year contract for the winning bidder, with the potential for two three-year extensions. The chosen supplier must have successfully implemented the technology they are offering within the last five years and for a user base of at least 150 core users.