Simpson Associates, a leading UK data analytics consultancy, is delighted to announce they have developed a ‘revolutionary’ single data solution for the Tackling Organised Exploitation programme (TOEX).
TOEX, together with Simpson Associates, developed a single data solution for Policing. This is the first solution to bring together regional delivery teams and national coordinated teams to create an enhanced intelligence picture of organised exploitation.
The single data solution enables data to be shared across forces, agencies, and third parties, enhancing collaboration and evidence-based decision making. Ultimately, this will contribute to the safeguarding of vulnerable people and disarming those causing harm. The data solution for TOEX comprises of two key parts: a data platform hosted in Microsoft Azure and a data analytics portal featuring Microsoft Power BI.
Commenting on the new data solution, Kate Thacker, Detective Chief Superintendent, TOEX Programme said: “The opportunity to bring together data into a single data platform is revolutionary. This is the first time in UK policing that this has been delivered.”
“It’s being recognised by partners as a proven deliverable and an achievable opportunity to upscale thereafter.”
Ross Gibson, Account Executive – Policing, Microsoft said: “What that’s going to enable in the future for policing is huge. Crime, as we all know, is borderless – and now we’re starting to get a borderless solution too.”
Detective Chief Inspector, TOEX Programme said: “We now find ourselves in a place where we have brought together 9 forces – crime, intelligence, data – into a cloud environment which we know is safe and secure.”
TOEX’s data platform is hosted in Microsoft Azure, which allows the infrastructure to be written as a code, and therefore has enabled Simpsons to deploy to different environments quickly and efficiently and keep the infrastructure consistent across environments.
Azure was chosen due to the ambition to go national, particularly using components such as Delta Lake within Azure and Synapse Analytics. This will allow the solution to meet the necessary requirements should the data platform go national.
A data platform like this supports the concept of using explainable machine learning tools as a method of identifying hidden harm. Not only would this improve the efficiency of hidden harm identification, but it would build up a wealth of evidence which can be used to inform decision making.
About The Tackling Organised Exploitation programme (TOEX)
The Tackling Organised Exploitation programme, or TOEX, has been developed to create a more holistic and ‘whole systems’ approach to tackling organised exploitation.
Previously, tackling organised crime has been a huge challenge – officers had to manually search various datasets to find information to inform their decision-making, which not only was a time-consuming process, but could be inconsistent and had a higher chance of human error.
About Simpson Associates
Simpson Associates (SA) is a leading UK Data Analytics Consultancy and Managed Service Provider, specialising in data analytics in the blue light sector. They believe in leveraging the power of data to connect and enable police forces in the UK. SA offer secure and easy access to data for analysis, incident crime reporting, crime mapping, demand planning, and fleet management solutions within the sector.
