New National Crime Agency may face legacy integration problems

Soca to be abolished

A new organisation, the National Crime Agency, is to replace the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), created just four years ago, the Home Office has announced.

The creation of the National Crime Agency is put forward in a consultation document entitled Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people.

The new agency will take over Soca’s responsibilities for tackling cyber crime, as well as taking on its phone and internet surveillance powers. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will also come under the remit of the new agency.

Home secretary Theresa May, who launched the paper, said the aim of the new agency was to “lead the fight against organised crime, protect our borders and provide services best delivered at a national level”.

Terrorism and a growth in serious organised crime and cyber crime required approaches “which cross not just police force boundaries but international borders,” May said.

Soca, which was created when the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad were merged, has repeatedly come under attack for its lack of accountability and its failure to achieve results.

A report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in April 2009 estimated that 2,800 organised crime gangs were operating in the UK, and criticised Soca for its lack of success in tackling the problem.

The National Crime Agency will also take over some of the work of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which is to be abolished under the new proposals. The NPIA, created in 2007, provides the police with expertise in IT and information sharing, and has responsibility for co-ordinating the implementation of standardised technology across police forces. It also runs the Police National Computer, the National DNA Database and the national fingerprint and palm print system.

Sarah Burnett, senior analyst at Ovum, said there were advantages to bringing the work of several crime-fighting organisations together: “In terms of data sharing it would probably make things easier if all organisations were part of one bigger parent organisation. There is potential for sharing of costs and efficiencies of scale and better data sharing.”

She warned, however, that integrating legacy systems could prove difficult: “There will be a lot of data migration and a lot of data cleansing at a detailed level.” To be successful, she said, the integration should be led by the business requirements, not by the technology.

Fuller details of the agency’s responsibilities will be outlined in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility bill, which the government will introduce in the autumn.