As part of the Security and Resilience Growth Partnership, ADS is leading the work of the UK’s Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Community (RISC) with the Home Office to establish a new Security Innovation and Demonstration Centre (SIDC).
SIDC will address shortcomings, from the perspectives both of end-users and the security sector, in the development, exploitation and export of UK security capabilities. It will develop partnerships between industry, academia, policy-makers and end-users in order rapidly to develop and demonstrate innovative solutions to key challenges.
SIDC will perform five functions:
- Developing Grand Challenges to stimulate and identify innovation, encourage the development of system-level solutions and help ensure interoperability.
- Projects in support of large-scale government programmes, where the programmes in question require greater agility, engagement with a wider range of suppliers, better understanding of commercial technology evolution, the use of open test beds before bringing solutions into secure environments, and the quick demonstration of benefits.
- Supporting projects funded under existing mechanisms such as the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), by providing successful bidders with access to end-users, facilities and data sets.
- Acting as a mechanism to receive, assess and exploit speculative, novel and adventurous research and proposals.
- Tasking received as part of Government-to-Government agreements.
Pilot projects are currently underway in the areas of: communications data, body-worn video for policing, and the digital criminal justice system.
More information can be found at the RISC website or on the government’s website.
SIDC project on Body-Worn Video and the Digital Criminal Justice System – 2 October 2014
From Body-Worn Video (BWV) trials to date, it is apparent that currently no single commercially available product exists that meets all the operational requirements for officers across different policing functions. Looking forward, BWV products also need to take into account future technology developments, integration with other frontline capabilities, and the future digital criminal justice system (CJS) agenda including effective data management, data exploitation and interoperability between different agencies.
In support of police and wider government efforts on Body Worn Video, SIDC is therefore starting a stream of work to inform BWV suppliers and others about some of the key operational issues that have been identified in using BWV across a range of policing functions. By doing this we hope to assist the market in developing a modular BWV product that fits within the future digital CJS.
The first part of this project will be a workshop on Thursday 2 October 2014. The workshop will lead onto broader work (a ‘Grand Challenge’) on the digital Criminal Justice System, including supporting the development of open standards.
The October workshop will:
- Share the results of BWV trials with (potential) suppliers and contribute to the development of a consolidated evidence base for BWV use across different policing functions.
- Allow end-users oversight commissioners (e.g. Information Commissioner and Surveillance Camera Commissioner) to share their experiences of BWV directly with suppliers and other agencies.
- Encourage new thinking about, and approaches to, BWV hardware, including collaboration between suppliers.
- Place BWV in the context of the vision for a digital criminal justice system.
Following the workshop, industry and academia will be able to access ongoing trial information and findings as appropriate, and any reports that are compiled on BWV research and findings.
Subsequent work will consider how to ensure data management and exploitation is effective, and contribute to the development of open standards for the broader Criminal Justice System to ensure interconnectivity between police forces and other CJ agencies.
The workshop will be of interest to BWV hardware manufacturers. The market for police BWVs is potentially very large, given that there are nearly 130 0000 police officers in England and Wales. Police forces have shown significant interest in BWV and supporting infrastructure. More than £4m has so far been allocated to help forces implement BWV systems. The workshop will also be of interest to industry and academics specialising in data management/analysis and the digital criminal justice system.
Further information and an agenda are available: SIDC – Body Worn Video and Digital CJS invitation and agenda – 2 October 2014. To register interest, please contact your Trade Association representative.
