Recommendation 24

HM Government Accepted

5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: July 2027 5.2 As set out in the Police Reform White Paper, the Home Office is already working to accelerate the adoption of new technologies to improve police productivity by increasing policing’s ability to identify what works, prioritise resource and roll out initiatives. 5.3 To achieve this, the Home Office is providing financial and practical support to the College of Policing and its Centre for Police Productivity to strengthen the identification and development of innovations with the greatest potential to improve productivity. This includes leading the assessment of innovations and best practice. Complementary activity funded through the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser is strengthening the science and innovation pipeline and improving links between policing, academia and industry. 5.4 The Home Office is agreeing a set of productivity priorities focused on technologies with the greatest potential to reduce administrative burden. These include data and analytics, artificial intelligence to support decision‑making and investigations, and automation of routine processes. In its first year, the National Centre for AI in Policing will prioritise high‑impact use cases aligned to these priorities, supporting forces to adopt proven tools at pace while avoiding duplication of effort. 5.5 Working with partners, the Home Office is streamlining arrangements for identifying, assuring clearer routes to national adoption and preparation for transition to the National Police Service and scaling new technologies. These include significant investments made in new secure national infrastructure with the Law Enforcement Capability Network, the Law Enforcement Data Service, the Law Enforcement Cloud Platform and the Law Enforcement National Identity and Access Management service. These core services provide the foundations for future secure and scalable modern IT services. To ensure policing can increase adopting and exploitation of new technology a Business Change Centre of Excellence has been established to provide guidance and blueprints on improved use of capabilities such as facial recognition and advanced analytics, as well as supporting the readiness of forces for new transformational capabilities such as the Emergency Services Network. 5.6 The Home Office is also working with the College of Policing to assess outputs from the new productivity diagnostic tool to identify opportunities to streamline processes and support forces to realise benefits.