In 2021, Sopra Steria undertook research in three phases: a review of existing research, followed by workshops with former police officers and police industry experts, and then interviews with current and former members of the policing community. Five key themes describing the main needs, concerns and challenges common across UK policing emerged from the first two phases, and formed the basis for our interviews in the third phase.
Through the third phase interviews, we examined these themes, evaluating how police forces are experiencing them, and capturing insights into how individual forces are dealing with them.
The five themes are:
Police forces face much public scrutiny, and a negative public perception of the force can heavily impact trust and confidence.
There is a general lack of data sharing within and between forces, as well as with external organisations, and there is little protocol and guidance to allow for easier and ethical methods of data sharing.
Unintended bias in technology used by the police can have negative impacts even when used with the right intention and in the right circumstances.
Forces lack the digital and ethical expertise to fully comprehend potential digital ethics issues.
There is no consistent way of embedding ethical approaches across UK policing, and there is little to no benchmarking done.
We will explore these themes and how they were evidenced by the findings from the research in more detail in the sections that follow.
