August 12, 2009 -- A partnership of leading IT service companies, led by Buying Solutions Prime Contractor Infotech Enterprises and consortium partners GGP Systems and Infoshare, have successfully bid for a competitive Tender issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), to provide a centralised address gazetteer for police services across Scotland. Lothian & Borders Police, who are representing the eight Scottish Police Forces and the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA), are overseeing the implementation of the contract, which will see the creation, implementation and use of a definitive national location gazetteer together with Gazetteer Management Software and Web Services throughout police services in Scotland. Infotech Enterprises as Prime Contractor will deliver programme management and project support office services, working with GGP Systems and Infoshare to deliver the contract over a three year term. The contract was completed via the BuyingSolutions GISS framework

Deputy Chief Constable, Tom Halpin, ACPOS National Command and Control Project Executive said: “This Contract is a key part of the wider ACPOS business change programme and represents groundbreaking improvements for the Scottish police service. The new system will help us to identify precise locations and allocate the best equipped and nearest police patrol.’’

This project will see the creation of a national gazetteer detailing every property in addition to the location of police “incidents” in Scotland. It will involve data from each of the eight Police Forces together with additional detail from Point X’s Points of Interest dataset and Experian’s QAS Names data being matched, cleansed and validated by Infoshare against a Primary Dataset. Infoshare will use their ClearCore Product suite to create this Primary Dataset from the One Scotland Gazetteer (OSG) which is made up of address data from the 32 Scottish Councils, to provide an accurate up-to-date database of land, property and locations.

Once created, the data will be accessed using advanced spatially enabled Gazetteer Management Software from GGP Systems. Every force will be able to search the gazetteer from the desktop system or remotely using web-enabled devices. By providing real time access to the centralised data, the project aims to improve intelligence for frontline service provision via integration to the new national Control & Command system. This enables back office analysts to have access to accurate incident records enabling detailed analysis leading to successful resource allocation. This is key in crime prevention, in tackling crime and in emergency planning. By using GGP Systems Web enabled solution, Officers will also be able to provide feedback to the centralised gazetteer; adding locations, noting exceptions and validating the data with real world observations.

Contact Prim Maxwell at GGP Systems, tel. +44 (0)20 8686 9887, e-mail: Email Contact, www.ggpsystems.co.uk