In response to the Crime and Disorder Act, Freedom of Information Act, and the eGovernment initiative to provide accessibility to information, all government agencies are required to find effective, trustworthy and legal ways to share information.

With crime and disorder partnerships for example, they need to link data from multiple agencies such as Local Authorities, Police, Fire and Ambulance services, in order to create an accurate picture of what is happening in the community.

Over 150 Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships use Infoshare’s technology to match, clean and share data between agencies to identify crime hotspots and other patterns in crime.

The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) dictates the legal basis for data sharing, whilst the Data Protection Act (1998) provides a legal framework for good practice in handling personal information.

Key issues include:

• Legislative barriers to information sharing, e.g. Data Protection Act
• Technical barriers for electronic information sharing, ie multiple sources, different databases, duplicate records

OmniData provides an advanced data cleansing and matching software package to enable trustworthy, accurate and legal data exchange between multiple agencies as well as providing transparency of data accuracy.

'Privacy Enhancing Technology' enables personal identifiers to be automatically disguised or removed, important for complying with the Freedom of Information, Data Protection Acts, Caldicott Guardian and Human Rights issues.

How does it work?
Data is automatically cleaned and matched against a validated reference address database, created by Infoshare’s OmniData. A number of facilities for customisable business rules and aliases are provided. All data is processed including addresses, non-addressable objects and locations, street junctions, aliases, ethnic codes, crime codes, times, dates, reference numbers, free text and abbreviations. Each record processed has an audit trail, formatted address details and map co-ordinates attached.

OmniData fits in with any IT infrastructure and all outputs are BS7666 compatible and can easily integrate with any data sharing partnerships and initiatives.

If you would like to find out more please contact Jane Keys by email: sales@infoshare-is.com or telephone the office on 020 8541 0111.

Useful Links
Crime Reduction Toolkits http://www.crimereduction.co.uk/toolkits/ui00.htm and http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/toolkits/ui10.htm

Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science (see http://www.jdi.ucl.ac.uk/)

Crime Mapping Guide from Jill Dando Institute
(see http://www.jdi.ucl.ac.uk/downloads/pdf/crime_mapping_guide.pdf)

USA : MAPS – Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety
(see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/)