I was interested to read Policing Minister Damian Green’s speech today at the Police College on Digital Pathfinders.  It had lots of good stuff in the speech but I was particularly taken with the following part:

“You have also flagged the need for better interface with other parts of the CJS. We have heard you and this government, alongside our policing partners, will look to unblock any of those issues as soon as we can. We are not going to create a central IT system. But we are going to do the boring, but vital bit.

We will set the technical standards to ensure that data is collected in compatible formats and that systems can speak to each other. We will create digital storage solutions so that the increasing amount of digital evidence can be stored efficiently without being transferred on email.”

I am delighted to hear that there is no new intent to create a central IT system.  There is also no need to create new digital storage solutions.  We have already built pam with that in mind and  work with numerous police forces and other criminal justice partners like probation on a range of Public Service solutions.  This became much easier recently with the formal announcement of pam being the first pan-government accredited IL3 RESTRICTED information service for this type of work within CJS (Criminal Justice Sector).  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get government to look a little more closely at what its digital pioneers in force have already been doing on that subject, like some of the other areas mentioned in the speech……….Police Oracle, one of the leading commentators on policing thinks that pam has a role to play too.