The launch of a national intelligence-searching facility for police forces is the first step towards the systems described as a national priority by the Bichard Inquiry into the Soham murders.

In the past, the only police data that was nationally searchable was the conviction information held on the Police National Computer or sex offender register. So Soham murderer Ian Huntley, for example, was able to get a job in a school despite a string of earlier sexual allegations against him, because he had never been convicted and had moved away from the area.

The Impact Nominal Index (INI), launched by police minister Hazel Blears at the Home Office last week, is the first tentative development in response. The portal uses the existing secure Criminal Justice Extranet (CJX) infrastructure and offers forces a search facility for checking if a suspect’s name is associated with any intelligence data held by other forces.

The system was developed by Cable & Wireless, which also runs the CJX, and went live just before Christmas for use by child abuse investigation units at all 43 forces in England and Wales. The Home Office says it has already provided a number of leads in real-life investigations.

‘The biggest problem in the police is that we don’t know what we know because there is so much information held,’ detective chief superintendent Peter Spindler, head of the Metropolitan Police child abuse investigation team, told Computing.

‘INI is an awesome search tool – it will allow us to pick out people operating below the radar, such as Ian Huntley, and gives us more information to make risk assessments or continue investigations.’

But the system is only an interim measure in the development of the sort of information-sharing recommended by Bichard. INI is an index of the names held in forces’ information sources, but once provided with a list of where data may
be held, officers will not be able to access the data itself. Instead they will have to
follow up over the telephone.

‘INI is extremely restricted in what it does,’ said Rick Naylor, president of the Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales.

‘In some respects it is a step forward, but it is just a flagging system and it
does not really solve the problems that Bichard brought forward. It is only the very, very first step in creating a national intelligence system.’

Ultimately the aim is to replace INI with the Cross Region Information Sharing Project (Crisp), a system that allows the information to be automatically searched and accessed.

But police data is held in many different systems and many different formats, so Crisp’s success will require agreement between the 43 forces that, in the past, has been hard to come by.

Over the coming year the Home Office aims to expand the index beyond child abuse units and into other policing areas, but the full Impact programme will not be in place until 2010, three years later than was originally expected.

There are also questions about cost. According to sources, the initial business case for the Impact system came with a price tag of £2bn, and is now being re-worked.