In this article:
The inaugural UK Police Industry Charter was signed in March 2024 by senior leaders in policing, government and industry. Its aim is ‘to set the foundational principles upon which industry partners, whatever their products or services, together with UK policing can collectively adhere to’.
We, at i2 Group, welcome the Charter as a clear framework in which we can work constructively with our customers and partners in UK policing. More than this; we agree with the principles and we are aligned with them. They are a set of five principles to shape a modern, fit-for-the-future Police Industry. One that is ethical, sustainable and collaborative.
So, let’s look at the five principles in turn:
i2 Group has always been, and will remain committed to, open architecture first for our Police customers and their partners. We understand the UK Police’s requirement to govern, access and understand its own data.
We support the requirement for interoperability by offering:
With this offering, you can deliver powerful, enduring, agile and innovative capabilities.
Our reputation for operationalized solutions is founded upon explainability and transparency. Our products are supported by open documentation, and our deployed solutions are delivered in consultation with the customer and supported through knowledge transfer.
We commit to adherence with the NPCC Artificial Intelligence Principles of lawful, transparent, explainable, responsible and accountable and robust processing. For example, our natural language processing technology is consistent, accessible, configurable and maintainable by our customers – with processed data substantiated to its source by design.
i2 Group is trusted because our technology is explainable, which accounts for why i2 products are familiar in courtrooms worldwide.
Working closely with our user community, leaders and their IT teams and partners, i2 Group continues to deliver enduring and robust solutions. We are committed to customer enablement and knowledge transfer.
In 2023-24, we trained over 1,500 intelligence analysts and strongly advise that enablement is incorporated as standard into customer contracts.
We are committed to democratisation of knowledge – in the design of our software solutions, how they are deployed and how they are trained. We are committed to broadening and simplifying our solutions, so that they are accessible and deployable by the right roles and skills owned by our customers.
Our Academic Programme provides free use of i2 software to universities for teaching, ensuring that the next generation of leaders, analysts and innovators can apply researched tradecraft from the field of evidence-based policing.
i2 Group’s values include accountability, responsibility and ownership. Nothing is someone else’s responsibility - we all have a role to play, and we all need to be willing to do our part.
This is why i2 Group is fully committed to designing and delivering products and services that enable UK Policing to deliver a sustainable, ethical and legitimate service to the public. It is a responsibility shared and i2, as a trusted partner of constabularies UK-wide, wants to play its part. At the same time, our visual analysis solutions are themselves helping law enforcement organisations globally to work towards a more sustainable world. We believe that technology at its best can be a transformative force for good and has a critical role in driving secure sustainable development, addressing specific sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Take the United Nations’ SDG 16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. There can be no sustainable development without peace, and no peace without sustainable development, affirms the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. ‘Reducing conflict, crime, violence and discrimination, and ensuring inclusion, stable conditions and good governance are key elements of peoples' well-being and essential for securing sustainable development,’ it says.
We support the assertion that security and justice are a means to achieving progress in poverty reduction, reversing inequality and enhancing effective governance. To this end, i2 Group’s technology has become instrumental in helping governments and agencies to uphold the rule of law, achieve justice and protect people and organizations in the UK and worldwide.
The i2 Group software portfolio is procured nationally for all territorial forces, regional and national units. This maximises purchasing power, delivers cost avoidance and enables us to reuse assets. Realised benefits are scalable and shareable.
We work closely with key stakeholders to ensure alignment to the customer’s digital transformation strategy. We partner with our user community to deliver best practice tradecraft that both solves the solution at hand and can be reused to solve new and emerging challenges.
Our broad, global customer base allows us to act as a conduit for best practice from industry worldwide, across many sectors. Our Academic Programme gives us insight into rigorously researched tradecraft from the field of evidence-based policing, which we operationalise in our products and deployed solutions.
The UK Police Industry Charter promotes an open dialogue between policing and the industry that supports it, and for this it is to be welcomed. As a company supplying cutting-edge technological solutions, we fully support the principle of interoperability first because it puts the client front and centre. If we can remove barriers in the way of using i2 solutions with other systems, then we will.
In supporting leadership development and greater openness and transparency, the Charter supports a more ethical and sustainable UK Police Industry. An industry that is fit for the future. This is very much an industry which i2 Group wants to be a part of, and we look forward to a future of collaboration and innovation to enhance law enforcement nationwide.
Seth is an award-winning service improvement and digital programme manager, partnership business intelligence developer and law enforcement intelligence analyst, with 17 years’ experience working for several UK constabularies. His current role is Technical & Tradecraft Subject Matter Expert.