Identity parades are a long-standing part of police investigations. But they can be unreliable if they take time to organise because experts estimate that victims' memory of an incident starts to decline after 10 days.
As part of Prime Minister Tony Blair's initiatives to cut crime, the Home Office wanted to find better and faster ways of organising parades, and decided to introduce a video identity system - called Viper - across the top 10 police forces in England and Wales.
What were the business objectives of the project?
'The police are increasingly looking for innovative technological solutions to support the fight against crime and lead to safer communities for us all,' said Tony King, national project manager for Viper.
West Yorkshire Police had already developed a video ID parade system for its own use, and the Home Office decided to fund the installation of this tool at the top 10 police forces, with a budget of £7.5m. The aim was to increase the number of convictions made as a result of successful line-ups.
The process works by taking a 30-second video of a suspect. The video is sent to the central Viper bureau where it is edited down to 15 seconds. The police officer, the suspect and his lawyer go through a database of more than 10,000 people that have volunteered to let their video image be used in parades and select suitable candidates. The bureau edits the suspect and volunteer videos into a clip that is burnt onto DVD at the local police station. Officers visit the witness, and play the DVD to them on TV or on a laptop to identify the suspected criminal.
What were the key milestones in the implementation?
The project started in April 2002. The initial target was to have one Viper system in each of the 10 forces within a month, which was quite a challenge, says King.
'We had Tony Blair's office ringing up and the Home Office wanting to know how it was going,' he said.
After installing one system in each force, the Viper team had to rethink the system before further rollouts.
'It wasn't scalable, and there wasn't any documentation. We used ISDN for the first 10 sites, but decided to move to an IP virtual private network,' said King.
In October last year, supplier Sagitta was contracted to develop a secure storage infrastructure to support wider use of the application. The project took 12 weeks to design, install and configure.
On 13 March, Home Secretary David Blunkett officially opened the Viper National Bureau.
What technology was used?
The system uses four Linux-based servers with 1.4Tb of IBM storage to hold video images of volunteers. IBM graphics workstations are used for editing footage.
How did you manage the business change and people issues involved?
'There was a lot of resistance from dinosaurs who didn't believe in using video,' said King.
Some police forces were reluctant to have something imposed on them or simply didn't think it would work, he says.
But these objections were overcome through good communication, and making sure everything worked first time.
'Once we got rolling, word got around. We helped forces put together the business case. We had a user group that met every month. And the project met its target dates, which overcame the scepticism. By the finish they were saying what a great system it is.'
What results were achieved?
Viper is in use at 69 sites in 17 police forces, with a further 25 sites being installed. And all the Scottish forces will be introducing the system too.
Over 500 video parades take place each week, and nearly 30,000 have taken place since April 2002. A live ID parade can take up to 10 weeks to set up, and half are abandoned. A video parade can be delivered anywhere in the country in less than two hours - the record is 18 minutes.
What were the lessons learnt?
'The value is in the database of volunteers,' said King. 'We put a lot of effort into that. We need to refresh 25 per cent of the images every year to take account of changes in hairstyles and fashions.'
What were the business benefits and return on investment?
Conventional line-ups cost between £750 and £1,250 - a Viper parade costs just £150. King says the project achieved a return on its £7.5m budget in just 11 months.
How do you plan to build on the project?
'There is already a strategy in place to roll out beyond the forces that are already buying in,' said King.
'We want to have a universal database for volunteers. And Viper will be an important part of NVIS - the national video identity system, which will bring together all the ID systems in use.'
King says he is also looking into how biometrics could be used in the database.
Computing says:
Viper promises to provide a major boost to tackling crime by taking an innovative approach to a long-established process - the identity parade - and changing it using new technology. A few years ago, using video editing suites and large storage systems would have been too expensive to make the project feasible. But Viper shows how lower-cost IT systems and fresh thinking can improve business operations.
Project at a glance
* The Home Office wanted more police forces to use video technology to speed up and improve identity parades to help cut crime
* The Viper project installed video ID systems first developed by West Yorkshire Police into the top 10 forces in England and Wales
* An IBM storage infrastructure installed by Sagitta holds 1.4Tb of video images of 10,900 people that have volunteered to allow their face to be used in parades* Viper cuts the cost of an identity parade from more than £1000 to just £150
* Soon, 25 out of the 43 police forces will be using Viper
* A video parade can be set up in less than two hours - the record is 18 minutes
* More than 35,000 Viper parades will take place this year
* The £7.5m budget was recouped in just 11 months
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