Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

SPONSORED FEATURE
Partnering with industry
By Jeff Penrose,
Solutions Director,
Justice & Public Safety, Oracle
Designing and delivering
enterprise-wide police IT systems
is not easy and requires a deep
understanding of the challenges and
an intricate combination of working
with internal and external stakeholders,
including a firm grasp of what each
stakeholder brings to the police business
and IT landscape.
Solution development relies on a
‘business owner’ articulating the police
business challenges and defining the
requirements working in collaboration
with his or her IT department among
many other stakeholders. This isn’t easy
at the best of times and, to be successful,
a deep understanding of the challenges
and how technology can meet them is
fundamental for success.
Oracle Corporation has been closely
co-operating with government agencies
and police forces since it was founded
in 1977. The roots of Oracle and
its world-leading relational database
technology emanate from demanding
government IT projects. Since these
early days Oracle has carefully expanded
its technology product range to cover all
critical components of an enterprise IT
solution involving key areas of hardware,
database, middleware and applications.
A complete framework
This enables Oracle to offer a complete
enterprise solution framework for
policing including the technology to
support the back office such as, human
resources, finance, logistics, intelligence,
performance reporting to the modules
needed to facilitate front line core
policing and mobile working.
The Oracle policing solution uniquely
combines the back office and the front
office in a secure IT solution ensuring
all areas of the organisation operate
collaboratively.
Oracle is a key policing vendor
partner, which can assist with the
discovery phase of IT enterprise solution
development working with the police
business owners, the IT department and
program delivery partners.
Delivery partners can include systems
integrators to configure solutions and
consulting firms engaged to deliver
business transformation programs linked
to the introduction of new or enhanced
business processes underpinned by new
technology.
However, the days of rigid police IT
systems are long gone with flexibility and
ease of configuration being mandatory.
Flexibility of configuration is necessary
to meet the demands offered when new
laws are enacted or old law amended,
work practices change to achieve best
practice or new standard operating
procedures are introduced. The Oracle
policing solution is highly configurable,
extremely flexible and designed to meet
the demands of policing well into the
future.
Re-evaluating strategy
If police forces are to resolve the
issues of IT rationalisation and
modernisation and provide the necessary
information and tools to the front line
then they should re-evaluate their
overall Information Technology and
Communications (ICT) strategic plans.
Isolating and tackling one component
or a module of an enterprise system
may only provide a short-term solution
to much wider IT and service delivery
issues.
Consequently, Oracle has invested
in developing a solution framework for
policing, demonstrating what is possible
using technology available now through
laying a technical foundation for the
future.