Challenge: Fragmented data landscape
Police Scotland faced significant challenges after inheriting eight outdated records systems from merged regional forces. These ageing and siloed systems encountered potential difficulties in aligning with current data protection laws and could have hindered effective policing by preventing a single view of critical offender and victim data. The data was non-standard, kept in various formats, and embedded in outdated local processes, requiring extensive cleansing and harmonisation.
To transition to a streamlined operational model, Police Scotland needed to consolidate this fragmented information into a new, national information management system, merging decades of disparate data - spanning over 20 years and millions of records - into a cohesive platform to ensure operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness in handling sensitive personal and investigatory information.
Solution: Strategic data integration
We were awarded the contract to design and deliver the National Data Migration solution for Police Scotland. Recognising the complexity of integrating multiple legacy systems, our solution focused on detailed design specifications, methodology statements, and rigorous quality assurance arrangements. Our comprehensive strategy included:
- Integrated design
In collaboration with Police Scotland, we mapped out legacy business processes and addressed data quality issues, ensuring precise alignment with the new platform's requirements. Our integration focused on accurate data placement, formatting, linking, and system reliability. We engaged with Police Scotland’s experts using digital collaboration tools such as shared workspaces and Jira, fostering an agile, transparent workflow that supported a thorough understanding and adaptation to the complexities of the legacy systems.
User-centred design methodologies were also pivotal in the development process, with early testing of prototypes ensuring the system met user needs and digital accessibility standards. Our teams defined essential data types and presentation methods on the new platform, emphasising the visibility of critical information such as risk flags for enhanced risk assessment.
- Ensuring interoperability
Ensuring seamless interoperability between the new information management platform and the legacy systems during the migration was a critical objective. We leveraged our extensive understanding of policing processes and technologies to manage the specifics of each legacy system effectively. A meticulous transformation plan was implemented to integrate data from various systems without compromising integrity or operational continuity, addressing any data anomalies carefully to preserve public safety and workflow efficiency.
- Delivery and transition management
Our approach involved developing a comprehensive project plan that served as a roadmap, outlining the steps, timeline, and resource allocation for each stage of the migration process. The adoption of a phased cutover approach minimised disruptions by transitioning one regional division at a time, allowing for thorough data validation before decommissioning the legacy systems.
The cutover method also eliminated the need for prolonged dual running of old and new systems across the organisation. This substantially reduced the complexity, cost, and risks of maintaining legacy systems past retirement. Once data for a division was fully migrated and validated, integration with the old system was smoothly decommissioned.
- Seamless, collaborative data migration
A significant challenge was translating and integrating vital operational data from various legacy systems into a format consistent with data rules. To address this, we conducted a proof-of-concept migration that not only demonstrated our technical expertise but also validated our data transformation strategy.
Our team worked closely with Police Scotland's digital specialists, forming a unified delivery team that utilised advanced extract, transform, and load (ETL) techniques with Police Scotland’s Microsoft and Oracle tools. This process involved cleansing, transforming, and accurately linking data to meet the required structure and format. Additionally, we developed an extensive suite of Open REST APIs within an agile framework, allowing for rapid incorporation of user feedback to enhance operational effectiveness. This strategy ensured seamless data integration into the operational national platform, maintaining data accuracy and continuity.
Adaptable and sustainable technology
Our system’s success hinged on building it on an extensible and modular technical architecture, allowing for future updates without affecting existing functionalities. This design enhanced scalability, enabling the addition of new modules without compromising performance. We leveraged mature enterprise integration patterns and tools, including Microsoft’s suite of technologies and Oracle SQL Developer, to ensure adaptability and long-term sustainability.
Results: Enhanced capabilities and improved public safety
We successfully delivered Police Scotland’s digital transformation programme, developing a deep understanding of the complex legacy environments and crafting robust data migration strategies.
This integration provided Police Scotland's officers and staff with a single, trusted, and indexed view of records spanning over 20 years, enabling the efficient removal of older records and facilitating the decommissioning of outdated legacy systems. Consequently, personnel now have immediate access to crucial operational information, significantly improving the force's capability to combat crime and deliver public safety effectively.
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