The National Crime Agency is the focal point of national and international intelligence sharing in the UK. One of the key activities they oversee is the timely circulation of intelligence (including data from EUROPOL, INTERPOL and other sources) to the UK Border Agency, the Warnings Index Control Unit network and onto the Police National Computer.

The National Crime Agency’s (NCA) International Crime Bureau (UKICB) manages INTERPOL circulations – Notices and Diffusions, which are international requests for cooperation or alerts allowing law enforcement agencies into EU member countries to share critical crime-related information.

Following the UK’s exit from the EU, UK police forces were advised to utilise INTERPOL circulations in place of the previous Schengen Information System (SIS) alerts, which would see approximately 36,000 INTERPOL circulations processed annually.

Processing INTERPOL circulations and SIRENE alerts was extremely resource-intensive and diverted staff from other core business functions, such as intelligence development and interactions with UK and international law enforcement agencies.

The solution

CGI deployed an Intelligent Automation (IA) solution for the NCA UKICB to accelerate the consistent and accurate processing, management and sharing of intelligence. CGI’s IA solution is applied across the organisation’s software landscape and applies to high volume, low skill, repetitive, rules-based processes.

By reviewing and changing the processes, the UKICB were able to redefine them to make them work better for automation. Since 2018, the UKICB has used CGI IA to process INTERPOL circulations, which included logging on and interacting with systems in the same manner as the human worker. These ‘virtual workers’ only completed programmed processes. Any cases requiring human interaction or a decision was automatically returned to a human caseworker. CGI IA automatically downloads and processes INTERPOL data, updates the Police National Computer (PNC) and issues updates outside of the NCA, including to the Warnings Index Control Unit (WICU) and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO), where appropriate.

The first tranche of CGI IA successfully automated four key SIRENE processes for the UKICB, completing case preparation and management activities 79% faster than with human workers. CGI IA has processed over 54,000 workflows since January 2019. This equates to a saving of 28,000 hours of manual processing and an average Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) saving of twenty officers.

The second tranche focused on the complex challenge of contingency planning for Brexit, with the potential of increased use of INTERPOL circulations from EU member states. This second tranche automated 18 processes and sub-processes and managed over 56,000 workflows since July 2019. The processing equates to a saving of 13,749 hours of manual processing and an average FTE saving of six officers.

The next tranches of IA will increase this by a further six FTEs, to significantly reduce workloads and enable better risk management of higher volumes of requests, for example, by identifying those with an established UK connection so they can be prioritised.

By mitigating the risk of manual data entry errors, CGI’s IA ensured that data is as accurate as possible and was shared automatically, with increased data flow to UK partners from weekly submissions to automated disseminations within 24 hours of receipt. This helped to improve employee morale as less popular administrative tasks were now completed error-free by virtual workers.

By performing over 70% faster than a human across all processes, the deployment of CGI Intelligent Automation (IA) within the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) International Crime Bureau (UKICB) enabled successful unattended automation of key operational processes.

The system automatically generates daily, weekly and monthly reports, which frees up 20 FTEs to conduct intelligence development work rather than case administration tasks.

Intelligent Automation

  • 79% faster than human workers
  • 28,000 hours of manual processing saved
  • Full-Time-Equivalent saving of twenty officers

 

The benefits

With a proven track record of understanding the unique challenges faced by each of our clients, and delivering robust timely solutions, the partnership between the NCA, CGI and the implementation of CGI IA resulted in the following:

  • The NCA realised the benefits of CGI IA and actively supported the expansion of the automation programme.
  • The NCA officers were able to spend more time on valuable intelligence gathering tasks and decision-making than before, providing better quality and more frequent reporting for internal and external partners.
  • The flexibility of the design was key to the seamless handoff of work tasks from virtual workers to the NCA officers, which meant the NCA was in control of its automated processes and directed the workforce according to incoming demand.
  • Automated process reporting provided visibility of processes, highlighting bottlenecks, and improving the efficient management of the workforce.
  • CGI IA demonstrated the ability to meet a surge in demand – reassigning virtual workers to the resultant backlog to clear it as quickly as possible; what had taken days of backlog clearing now took only hours.

Accurate, timely and available intelligence saves lives, prevents crime and protects the UK and its citizens.