National Crime Agency will re-use old SOCA technology

Home secretary Theresa May gave further details of the likely structure of the National Crime Agency (NCA) in a Commons speech yesterday.

The NCA is the body set to replace the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and it will begin work in 2013.

The new agency will also replace the Child Exploitation and Protection Centre, incorporate a border policing responsibility, and house the National Cyber Crime Unit.

It will be a centrally managed body providing intelligence, data analysis and crime prioritisation instructions to other crime-fighting and government bodies, including the police and HMRC.

A 28-page report, also released yesterday, entitled NCA, a plan for the creation of a national crime-fighting capability said the body would have a "powerful intelligence and analytical capability" supported by recent technology.

The same report said that the NCA would seek to use or adapt existing technology systems rather than design new ones and would inherit a range of systems and assets from its precursor agencies, abiding by the SOCA 2010 ICT renewal programme.

The report also said the intelligence capability would comprise a coordination hub, with information flowing to and from the police and other law-enforcement agencies in support of tactical operational activity.

Additionally, it will include an expert analytical function that will play a strategic role, dubbed the Joint Serious and Organised Crime Assessment Centre.

Peter Forrest, managing director of DPM Systems, a company that provides national security IT systems, welcomed the proposals for the NCA as it would integrate vital information on serious crimes within the UK.

He said: "In the 11 years that we have been working with smaller countries to ensure the free interchange of centralised information, we have seen that relying on disparate sources of related data undermines the ability to prevent crime.

"Tackling crime within and across national borders calls for not only an integrated and intelligent approach to data management, and a removal of departmental proprietorship of information – it also requires careful attention to the structure of the organisation. Demarcation lines between the converging agencies' processes and IT will have to be quickly removed, but so will any superfluous levels of management."

However, he does provide a warning: "We can all provide examples of public and private organisations that are limited by their by many layers of management, and this new National Crime Agency, born out of the collaboration of multiple management structures, is immediately at risk of falling into the same traps. The flatter the structure, the more effective the new agency will be."