As society becomes increasingly digitalized, safety and security in the real and digital worlds are increasingly intertwined. Digital can now support in the prevention, protection, detection, and response of real-world public safety threats. However, this opportunity requires careful management of public trust, data integrity and security. If security is breached and trust is squandered in this area, benefits and opportunities for greater public safety will be lost.
What you need is a contract between cities and citizens to help maintain the peace and keep each other safe. In this way, society is active in public safety and share data – both proactively and through consent – with emergency services and local government for the benefit of society and improved safety. We also need better data sharing between government and local agencies to provide better services, greater efficiencies and improved public safety.
Predictive policing
The making use of social and economic contextual data points can help to predict times of heightened safety concerns. For example, understanding when people are paid or when there are large sporting events taking place can help predict flashpoints for criminal behavior.
Predictive policing means that local government can offer its citizens the right support at the right time to avoid potential unrest. A broad view of potential flashpoints enables better and more proactive policing and decision-making. However, only with a trusted partnership in place between citizens and public sector, can public safety truly benefit from such developments.
Data sharing and network management in public safety
Enabling different agencies to share information and collaborate on incident response and information can be a real game-changer for public safety and is sadly still very rare — due to legacy IT systems and complexity around data protection. In Spain, Atos has developed a unique intelligence sharing system, the first of its kind, with an emergency response center that has representatives from emergency medical services, doctors and nurses, firefighters, Guardia Civil, national and local police. These agencies are set up in concentric circles to visually maximize collaboration. Between them, they can make appropriate decisions on how and who is best to respond to any given emergency. This integration of agencies provides increased agility and efficiency and, crucially, a better response and outcome for citizens.
This model can also work virtually, creating an ecosystem that shares various data points across different government agencies through new secure networks and data exchanges. These must be protected with identity and access management controls and the data must be encrypted on every step of the journey. These ecosystems can provide real-time data on contextual data points, incident response, and local government information on individuals. Atos has managed a system of this kind in the UK, identifying vulnerable citizens by sharing intelligence between five public service organizations in a county within Wales. The project aims to enhance the quality of response and enable more strategic assessments of the needs of vulnerable citizens, providing a service that can be both tailored and efficient.
Security and ethics
With an increasingly digitalized society, progress in data sharing and its use for public safety is inevitable, and will bring efficiencies as well as benefits. The process behind it, however, still needs to improve significantly.
I am optimistic this change will happen. Public trust will increase if citizens are kept aware, understand the process and can see it is transparent and brings personal and societal benefits. Building systems through the prism of digital security and ethics is vital.
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