1 June 2004

Kent County Council launches co-ordinated approach to crime and disorder - 'KentCADDIE'

By Nick Moon, Joint Project Manager for KentCADDIE

Nick Moon, Joint Project Manager, KentCADDIE

KentCADDIE, a Kent County Council partnership project that went live last week, aims to provide an online crime and disorder information exchange to enhance 'evidence-based' policing and crime prevention.

Kent County Council wanted a holistic view of crime and disorder information in the county to improve community safety, reduce citizens' fear of crime and provide better information to the authorities involved in crime and disorder. After seeing what Sussex had achieved in its development of CADDIE (Crime and Disorder Data Information Exchange) we realised that such a system would support Kent and Medway's vision for sharing sensitive data and enhance our service provision in the field of crime and disorder.

The Community Safety Unit of Kent's Social Services began the project in Spring 2003. This was when we started negotiations with our 13 CDRPs (Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships) who were trying to share data by conventional, manual means. It's amazing how quickly and easily the project got off the ground - about a year from start to finish - indicative of Kent's positive mindset when it comes to partnership working in general. Funding came from Kent County Council and the county's 12 CDRPs and Medway Council.

The approach we chose does not link the IT systems of the various agencies involved - it just links the data - and this is a fundamental benefit to us.

The approach we chose does not link the IT systems of the various agencies involved - it just links the data - and this is a fundamental benefit to us. It saves money as we don't have to invest in getting various legacy systems to work together; saves staff time as data quality is handled automatically so eliminating the need for scrapping or re-working of data; and it also takes care of Data Protection issues as we can prove the data is accurate before it's shared due to built-in data audit capabilities.

KentCADDIE satisfies our need for data sharing across agencies which are key for community safety as we're able to analyse the whole issue not just the sum of its parts. By being able to combine data from a whole range of services in Kent, it gives us a much more accurate picture of what's going on so we can make better strategic and proactive decisions on resource allocation.

The system provides partner and public access to crime and disorder data, integrated from local government agencies, police, fire and ambulance services. Over the coming months more data sets will be added - such as from the Youth Offending and Probation Services, the Drug and Alcohol Action Team and other Kent County Council agencies such as Education data too.

Analysis from the data sharing initiative will let emergency services spot area trends such as vehicle crash and burglary hot spots and take appropriate action. This will help facilitate the CDRP's evidence-based crime prevention by clearly indicating cause and effect, as trends can be measured by the temporal and spatial aspects of the system.

KENTCADDIE will enable the council to make more informed decisions when allocating funding, by highlighting key problem areas within the county.

KENTCADDIE will also enable the council to make more informed decisions when allocating funding, by highlighting key problem areas within the county. The goal is to use technology to deliver services more effectively, efficiently and economically, while Kent residents are provided with timely and accurate information about crime, anti-social behaviour and other community safety-based issues in their area via KentCADDIE's maps and graphs in easily digestible format. The system is very intuitive and it's easy to ask your own questions and build a picture of 'hotspots'. Police research shows that often peoples' perception of crime is far higher than reality and KentCADDIE helps counter this by increasing their understanding and awareness. KentCADDIE will allow the local community to obtain details of projects that are underway in the area, take part in questionnaires about the schemes taking place and find help and advice on community safety issues.

Sarah Hohler, Kent County Councillor, Cabinet Member for Community Services said about the project: "KentCADDIE can be seen as an extension of the partnership-based, intelligence-led crime prevention approach which is propounded in Kent. Not only is it anticipated that it will allow partners to better allocate resources to those areas that need it most, it will also allow the Kent public, for the first time, to see and interact with accurate and timely information from a multitude of agencies all in the same place. This will help combat the common perceptions that crime levels are much higher than they are in reality, which should in turn lead to reassuring local residents. It will also put people in touch with advice and information that will help improve their quality of life."

Challenges

One major challenge in a project like this is how to overcome issues surrounding sharing sensitive data about people from agencies listed above. KentCADDIE uses privacy-enhancing technology from Infoshare so it can operate without breaking the Data Protection Act. Infoshare automatically cleans, corrects, validates and geocodes all data while removing information that would identify an individual. This functionality also solves the problem of trying to manipulate so many different sources of data which are all in various states of repair.

Another hurdle to overcome was some people's perception that the system would create more work for the CDRPS whereas in reality, due to the automation of data validation and de-personalisation, it is estimated that KentCADDIE will cut time CDRP Intelligence Analysts spend on data manipulation by 80% as they no longer have to deal with so much raw data. Now they can spend more time analysing trends and feeding this information back into the system.

CADDIE and the future

The great thing about CADDIE is that it was designed as an open and flexible model which can be transferred to any authority and it meets data sharing requirements which would normally cost millions of pounds to achieve. Its flexibility supports our vision of a multi-agency data and information exchange network across the whole of the county and makes it the most comprehensive facility of its kind in the county. It's hoped that other authorities will soon start using CADDIE too.

For more information about the KentCADDIE project visit www.kentcaddie.org.uk or contact Nick Moon at nick.moon@kent.gov.uk

Nick is from the Community Safety Unit, Social Services, Kent County Council

Readers are reminded that any opinions and commentaries expressed in this article are solely those of the contributing author. They do not reflect those of eGov monitor Weekly nor represent an agreement, endorsement or approval of any kind.