Changes in online crime reporting facilities

09/07
15 May 2007
MPA briefing paper

Author: Paul Cripps, MPS

This briefing paper has been prepared to inform members and staff. It is not a committee report and no decisions are required.

Summary

1. The centrally funded UK Police Portal www.police.uk closed down on 31 March 2007 at short-notice due to the withdrawal of PITO/NPIA funding. The service previously provided:

• On-line forms for the notification of crime and hate crime
• Hosting of some MPS web content
• The Police Message Broadcast service (SMS, email and voice message delivery – used by the MPS Communities Together team with a distribution of approximately 5,000 people).

2. At the point of closure, the Police Message Broadcast service was only being used by 5 forces, the MPS and Suffolk were reported to be the main users. The NPIA are due to launch a new service from June of this year, this being over one year later than originally expected. However, there appears to be uncertainty about the future of this contract and of the expected take-up of the service by UK Forces.

3. The MPS have now developed a replacement online crime reporting form which is hosted on our own website https://online.met.police.uk/  Once the form information is submitted, the process of managing the data is exactly the same as the previous system (i.e. secure email delivery to the CCC Contact Office, for onward transmission to owning boroughs and units for action). The form is now presented as one page rather than the previous seven-page format and is more aligned to the information that is required for input into the MPS CRIS system.

Impact of www.police.uk Closure

4. The change from a national to an MPS only service may attract on-line crime reports intended for other UK forces, which could potentially increase the workload for the CCC Contact Office. To avoid this clear guidance is given on the website that the service is only to be used for incidents in the Greater London area, but consideration will be given to a postcode validation system should this become necessary.

5. The replacement services have cost approximately £50k to implement with associated annual support charges in the region of £20k (exclusive of usage charges for SMS messages and telephone calls). Web form development has been carried out by in-house Directorate of Information (DoI) resources and security penetration testing carried out by independent specialist consultants.

The Replacement Services

6. Secure on-line crime reporting forms (including hate crime) have been hosted on https://online.met.police.uk/  since 8am on 2 April 2007. Crime reports have continued to arrive at the expected rate of about 300 per week.

7. By introducing new services on the MPS website there is a risk that high demand could lead to overload. In order to mitigate this risk, contingency plans for hosting MPS web content at alternative locations have been put in place.

8. A bulk SMS text messaging service (O2) has been in place since 2 April 2007.

9. To operate a replacement PMB service, it has been necessary to request the transfer of the registrant’s data from the NPIA. To meet the requirements of the Data Protection Act, the MPS have agreed to become ‘joint data controllers in common’. Registrant’s will be contacted to let them know that the MPS now holds their details and to give advice about how to amend their details or to unsubscribe from the service.

10. Secure on-line Police Message Broadcast registration forms will be developed as soon as we receive the registrant’s data from NPIA and will be hosted on https://online.met.police.uk/

11. An interim voice message broadcast system is in place. However, this has significantly lower call capacity than the previous PITO system, but is able to process approximately 450-500 calls per hour.

Abbreviations and acronyms

CCC

Central Communications Command

CRIS

Crime Report Information System

DoI

Directorate of Information

MPS

Metropolitan Police Service

NPIA

National Police Improvement Agency

PITO

Police Information Technology Organisation

PMB

Police Message Broadcast

SMS

Short Message Service (mobile text messaging)

UK

United Kingdom

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