Police Mobile Data Solution

Delivering real increases in operational efficiency

» Mobile Communications Gateway
» A Modular Approach
» A Managed Service
» A Secure Solution

Arqiva has worked in partnership with UK Police Forces to develop a market leading mobile data solution. Through these partnerships Arqiva has developed a real understanding of the operational and organisational issues facing the Police today and the questions they have about the future.

Police Forces today are facing increasingly higher targets of availability, efficiency and effectiveness. The challenges of meeting these targets have pushed mobile data to the top of the agenda. Having listened extensively to these Police Force requirements, Arqiva has developed a scalable end-to-end mobile data solution that meets the stringent operational requirements of today's policing, providing a seamless data flow between the control room and the Police Officer.

End-to-end data solutions need careful management. Recognising this, the Police Mobile Data Solution has been developed in partnership with leading mobile data specialists Detica. The solution uses industry leading components and builds on the experience gained in implementing mobile data solutions in both the emergency services and commercial markets.

Arqiva's solution encompasses any user device, from a Mobile Data Terminal (MDT), to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or Tablet PC, formatting the data to maximise the potential of the device. It can also be scaled to serve any size of deployment from MDTs in a few patrol vehicles to a force wide issue of many thousands of PDAs.

Mobile Communications Gateway

At the heart of the solution lies the Mobile Communications Gateway (MCG). The MCG interfaces with the national and local information sources such as the Police National Computer (PNC) and Command and Control, formatting and sizing the information for transmission over any of the currently available air interfaces, be it Airwave, G3, GPRS or Transcomm. This ability to work over all available air interfaces allows the best network to be selected to match the data application, a primary and secondary network to be configured to provide resilience and the ability to operate networks in parallel to increase capacity. The MCG also provides access control, device management and user management.

The MCG consists of both communications and integration platforms. The communications platform employs industry standard software and is designed to control data flow to the air interface. Its primary functions are to optimise the performance and usability of low bandwidth air interfaces, support real-time switching between different networks and provide store and forward functionality to ensure no data is lost over the air interface.

The integration platform is built upon the industry standard BEA WebLogic Java 2 Enterprise Edition server which provides proven scalability, reliability, load balancing and performance. The integration platform provides interfaces to a range of back office systems.

A Modular Approach

The modular design of the MCG allows applications to be added at any time.

A set of standard interfaces is available and new interfaces can be added on a modular basis. These include:

Police National Computer (PNC) checks
Address query using voters register
DVLA Driver Validation Service (DVS)
National mobile phone register
Command and Control interface
Emerald warrants management system
Email
Mapping and Navigation
Force telephone directory
Force gazetteer
System administration
Stop and Search
Fixed Penalty Notices
Collision and Accident reports
Kelvin Connect Pronto electronic notebook
Criminal History System (CHS - Scotland only)

For example, PNC access and the address query could be implemented initially and as requirements develop, a module could be added to interface with the Command and Control system.

A Managed Service

Building on Arqiva's established background in Managed Services, the solution is provided as a fully managed service and encompasses all of the elements required to support the solution throughout its operational life:

Full system builds, end-to-end integration and testing.
Comprehensive user training.
MDT installation in vehicles.
Asset management of deployed MDTs and PDAs.
Round the clock technical support and advice.
User and maintenance support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A Secure Solution

The Arqiva solution also provides approved end-to-end encryption over all mobile bearers. The encryption system makes use of FIPS 140-2 algorithms. Access to the system can be controlled on a device or user basis and the system administration facility allows any device to be instantly disabled. A disabled device cannot gain access to any back office systems. In addition the solution provides a full audit trail of all interactions on the system.