NSW Police builds new image bank

NSW Police has signed a three-year $6 million contract with Unisys for the implementation and maintenance of a digital image management system.

(Kirribili Protest image by recoverling, CC2.0)

Forensic teams take one million images annually, according to the NSW Police, and also received images and video images from the public. The Unisys system will be able to store large volumes of images securely while easing the process of managing, sharing and accessing them — saving time in criminal investigations.

Under the deal, Unisys will not only provide systems integration services for the force, but will also customise the user interface to meet NSW Police security requirements. According to Unisys, the NSW Police Force will be the first police force to implement an imaging system on such a scale.

"We are investing in the future of the NSW Police Force by providing officers with the necessary resources to do their job effectively using modern, smart policing strategies," detective superintendent Ken Hughes, commander of NSW Police Force's Operational Information Agency said in a statement.

Hughes said that moving to a digital-based image management system would save time, with officers able to check the quality of their photos before leaving crime scenes.

"As Australia's largest police organisation covering a diverse population of seven million people across more than 800,000 square kilometres, we deal with very high case loads so time efficiency is critical," he said.

The system keeps a record of what occurs to the images to ensure forensic integrity. The images from the public and those from forensics will be stored on two different systems. The system will run on 32 Unisys servers.