Creating value with web services in UK Criminal Justice

3 July 2006 by Rod McLaren

UK Criminal Justice is in theory a relatively small ecosystem: there are a smallish number of government organisations (the Police, National offender management, the Crown Prosecution Service, courts, etc) and businesses and contracted to provide a set of services to the government, but politically it’s somewhat complex and occasionally opaque, and it is getting larger and more connected in terms of information, IT and governance.

There are correspondingly a small number of large IT projects in certain areas of policing, crime reporting, court case management and so on. Furthermore, the Home Office has recently been under pressure over its poor performance and its plans to reform policing; this pressure may result in a gradual tide of changes in compliance, data gathering and so on as it raises its game. However, this post suggests that it might be better for contractors to get on and publish some web services/data formats that benefit both themselves and the wider ecosystem—to try something and then see if it forms useful, de facto standards for all.

Disclosure: Mobbu provides various IT services around prisoner management/movement and court management to GSL, one of the major contractors to the Home Office’s Prison Escort activities, but this post reflects no customer bias, nor an official position by GSL. It’s just an idea, and we hope it might apply across the board for UK Criminal Justice.

Contractor X exposes a web service (and who uses it?)

Contractor X should develop its own web service/API with a very simple data format and publish its availability to police services, National Offender Management Service, Prison Escort and Custody Services, and other contractors in the ecosystem. The web service would be used to get information in and out of Contractor X’s systems. “If you need to send us data, or make a request of us, then just use this data format here and this API/webservice here.”

Possible use cases:

• Police forces that are sufficiently tech savvy could use it to add transfer requests to Contractor X’s system – and also see what’s happening with prisoners that they transfer-requested. This is useful for forces because there’s a trend to act unilaterally, rather than waiting for top-down decrees from PITO, the Police IT Organisation.
• Contract monitors at the Home Office and elsewhere would use it to have their read-only view of the whole system.
• Contractor Y could use it to request/manage/see the history of interactions they have with Contractor X.
• In future, you could imagine third-party software developers could use it create add-ins to Contractor X’s systems, should Contractor X be uninterested or unable to. (A little like the AppExchange that runs on top of Salesforce.com, adding value to the core service.)

So the idea is that Contractor X would unilaterally come up with something and get it out into the world, rather than the previously discussed approach of lobbying the Home Office to dictate a standard. If the execution was sufficiently useful to all parties (ie sensibly thought through), it’s hard to see it as a problem.

Underlying reasons for Contractor X to provide a web service

• Shows enormous goodwill to the wider PECS ecosystem: rather than wait for PECS or a larger government agency to determine some top-down standard for communication, Contractor X could start trying something right now. “Hey Police Officer, here’s something that would make your job easier. Perhaps your force’s IT team can help you use it?”
• Potentially see some cost-saving if Contractor X can (eg) encourage police forces or prisons to start using it rather than sending faxes that take longer and require duplication of data.
• It’s better to drive the process, and by extension the underlying agenda, than wait and be driven by a third-party.
• It would be a more effective form of “common data format” advocacy than periodically lobbying PECS or the Home Office to decree a Grand Method Of Communicating Data
• If people use it, you could perhaps imagine them going with the flow and adopting it as a de facto data format for their own systems, or certainly remaining compatible with it. Ie: third-parties might start developing services that Contractor X could then benefit from.

How Contractor X could provide a web service

• To avoid the inevitable negative PR citing security, Contractor X would require that users pre-register via a Contractor X human who can check that the institution is entitled to access/use/write data.
• Design a web service/API/data format that talks to known systems, but more importantly is designed to meet the needs of the other entities in the ecosystem, as well as Contractor X’s.
• Document and publish the API/data format, and hold some seminars on it (ie advocacy to other contractors, individual police forces etc)
• Be ready to make improvements based on the feedback Contractor X will get—it’s happy to do this because Contractor X thinks of the web service as a benefit to the ecosystem rather than just to itself.
• Update existing websites to indicate to Contractor X users which data may be “publicly” or “semi-publicly” viewable—in theory this is all data already, because Home Office Contract Monitors already oversee everything.

Arguably the idea of a unilateral programme is problematic because the Home Office already has regulatory and operational frameworks in place that initiate and manage such improvements and interactions. But perhaps a bold Contractor X needs to get on and do it, seeking forgiveness afterward, and play its part in driving the improvement of the Criminal Justice system.

1. I really should have mentioned the Criminal Justice Exchange project [1] in that post! In some respects CJE attempts to provide some of the functionality I mention above, but its rollout is expected to continue until 2008 [2] – contractors may be able to move much more quickly than that, on systems already tested at scale. Of course the hypothetical Contractor X would ultimately aim to interoperate with CJE, and the web services approach above should help that.

   [1]
   New ally in fight against crime
   [2]
   The McCue Interview: Criminal Justice IT director-general John Suffolk

   
   — Rod McLaren    4 July 2006, 18:19    #

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