Investigation Departments in Force
Request
This is a FOI request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
1. How many investigation departments are there within your police force (e.g. criminal, narcotics, traffic, cybercrime, etc)?
2. Is your third-party investigative software procured by a centralised IT team or by each investigation department?
3. What was your police forces overall spend on third-party investigative software last year? £…k
4. In percentage terms, approximately how much of this annual spend was:
a. One-off costs (e.g. installation): …%
b. Recurring software fees: …%
5. In percentage terms, approximately how has your overall spend, on an annual basis, changed over the past 3 years?
a. Why (e.g. increase in number of users within existing departments, increase in departments, adopting new software, price increases, etc.)?
6. Please populate the below table, specifying your police force’s third-party investigative software spend by category and listing your current software provider(s).
Note that the total annual spend across the below categories should approximately sum to the overall annual spend on third-party investigative software, as per Q3.
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Category of investigative software |
Description |
Approximate annual spend, £k, last available year |
Name of your current software provider(s) |
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Case management software |
Software used as a central hub to manage cases (from incident to reporting), including to ingest and manage relevant evidence, track case progress, and prepare reports for court proceedings. |
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Financial investigation software |
Software designed for extracting, cleaning, analysing and / or visualising financial data and information to investigate financial crimes. |
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Covert operations software |
Software for planning, managing, and executing covert operations, including surveillance management, undercover operations, intelligence gathering and secure communication tools. |
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Critical incidents software |
Software designed specifically for managing and coordinating responses to crises and major incidents. This includes tools for resource allocation, situation analysis, incident tracking, and strategic decision-making during large-scale emergencies. |
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Computer-aided dispatch software |
Software for real-time dispatching of emergency services and communication between dispatchers and field units. This category focuses on the operational aspects of dispatching resources, managing communication channels, and ensuring quick response to everyday incidents. |
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Open-source intelligence analysis software |
Software that aggregates and analyses data from multiple open sources (e.g. public records, social media, online forums, etc.) to identify patterns, relationships, etc that aid investigations. |
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Digital forensics software |
Software that enables data extraction from various digital devices (e.g. mobile, social media, cellular networks, etc) and performing detailed analysis on retrieved files. |
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Digital recording and transcription software |
Software used for taking notes, recording interviews, and transcribing recordings into text for analysis, reporting and archiving (can be used in fieldwork by police officers and on investigations). |
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Public evidence and appeals submission portal |
Software that enables members of the public (e.g. victims, witnesses, partners) to upload evidence and information that relates to a criminal incident(s). |
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Other investigative software |
Please provide a high-level summary of what other includes: […] |
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Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt), to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
a. states that fact,
b. specifies the exemption in question and
c. states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
The following exemption applies to the disclosure of the information:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
South Yorkshire have a number of departments and teams which use investigation systems and software of some sort. For example: Operational Support and Specialist Crime Services business areas or Communications Centre, Force Crime Unit, CJU, District teams, Professional Standards, CID, Collisions, PVP, Major Crime.
There are also mandated national systems such as PNC, which are funded by different departments.
We do not hold this in one centralised location or team.
To attempt to locate and extract the data for your request from just within the Specialist Crime Services alone would require looking at each individual order and trying to track back what the costs are for overall spend, Annual spend and any changes of those. Any system has a decrease in costs if licenses are surrender or not used or an increase when new systems are contracted or general inflation etc.
Specialist Crime Services alone have 50 systems all of which would have associated costs, each arrangement would have to be reviewed. This process would exceed the 18hr rule allowed by the FOI Act and doesn’t take into account the other departments and business areas within the force that would need to be contacted to see if they hold a system that fits the criteria of your request.
The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provide that the cost limit for non-central government public authorities is £450. This must be calculated at the rate of £25 per hour, providing an effective time limit of 18 hours.
Guidance from the Information Commissioner to public authorities is that where one part of a request is reasonably estimated to exceed the appropriate limit then the authority is not obliged to consider or comply with the remainder of the request up to the point at which the appropriate limit has been reached. Please note point 30 of the below link:-
Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to anyone making a request for information, South Yorkshire Police publishes via the Police Crime Commissioner all purchases over a £500 spend on the below link and this may provide you with data:
https://southyorkshire-pcc.gov.uk/openness/finance/spending-over-500/
Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.