Unisys to Help NSW Police Force Use Digital Imagery as New Weapon in Law Enforcement and Crime Prevention

The New South Wales (NSW) Police Force has selected Unisys Australia in a three-year deal to implement and provide maintenance services for an end-to-end digital imagery management system to manage and protect the approximately 1 million digital images taken annually by forensic teams as well as images and video footage received from the public. This system is designed to allow the Police Force to protect images as evidence while streamlining the process of managing, sharing and accessing them to save critical time in criminal investigations. The contract has an estimated value of approximately AU$6 million (US$4.75 million).

The NSW Police Force will be the first police force in Australia to implement a digital imagery system of this scale – a solution able to manage and securely archive a large volume of images, stored in a searchable central repository, to make them quickly accessible for law enforcement purposes.

“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,” said Detective Superintendent Ken Hughes, Commander of the Operational Information Agency, NSW Police Force. “Moving to a digital-based imagery management system will save critical time in the law enforcement process. Officers can check the quality of their photography before leaving crime scenes, with no need to process and print photographic film. In addition, they will be able to quickly search, retrieve and distribute filed images.

“As Australia’s largest police organization covering a diverse population of seven million people across more than 800,000 square kilometers, we deal with very high case loads so time efficiency is critical. In addition, digital imagery is pervasive in our society - from cameras in cell phones to closed circuit TV cameras – so we receive a large volume of imagery from the public. The Unisys solution will help us protect digital images and footage, while enabling investigators to access and use them more effectively,” he said.

Allen Koehn, managing partner, Public Sector, Unisys Asia Pacific said: “This NSW Police Force initiative reflects a common trend in law enforcement organizations worldwide in recognizing the role that technology can play to provide new tools to help law enforcement and crime prevention – technology can help provide new capability on the front line.

“These digital images are critical pieces of evidence that must be both protected and shared with the law enforcement officers who need them to investigate and prosecute criminals. Our knowledge of the importance of imagery used as evidence has been fundamental to the design of the Unisys solution, which is based on a combination of our security, technology and applications expertise, as well as the insight of the Unisys team which includes professionals who have worked as law enforcement officers.”

Shared Imagery Management System – the Unisys Solution

Under the three-year contract, Unisys (NYSE:UIS) will provide systems integration services and customization of the software user interface so that the solution allows the police force to meet the NSW Police Force’s security and workflow requirements as defined by the Australian Guidelines for Digital Image Processes. The solution will run on eight Unisys ES3240L and 24 Unisys ES3215L Enterprise Servers.

The Shared Imagery Management System (SIMS) is designed to quickly and securely categorize, archive, search and distribute imagery that the NSW Police Force obtains from two sources: the forensic-grade photography taken by police officers at crime scenes, and the many formats and modes of imagery collected from the public. This will allow investigators to efficiently access and distribute imagery from both sources - for example, sending photographs of fingerprints to relevant experts or storing closed circuit TV footage retrieved from a shop’s security surveillance system for later analysis.

Forensic experts will be able to use SIMS to upload images from digital cameras, and securely archive encrypted copies of them in a digital “vault” where the hardware locks the images so they cannot be modified or deleted. They would then attach metadata tags to a working copy of the images which may include a job number, time and date of shot, and name of photographer, for easy retrieval. The system tracks what has happened to the image at every step of the process to ensure forensic integrity.

The video and images collected from the public comes from a range of sources in a wide variety of formats. To make it easier and quicker for investigators to use this imagery, a copy of the original file will be saved into the digital vault, and then another working copy of the image will be passed through a powerful transcoding application to convert the file into a common, easily accessible format.

The forensic and public images will be stored on two separate systems.

The Unisys solution will feature FotoWare®, from Pivotal Business Technology, as the enterprise-class digital asset management software used in the heart of SIMS. Unisys has also partnered with EMC to provide the storage capability including EMC Centera® for the digital vault and EMC CLARiiON for the storage supporting the work system.

Unisys has extensive experience delivering high-end IT services – from security, identity and credentialing solutions to outsourcing, hardware integration and application modernization – to federal and state government departments and agencies in Australia and internationally. These include biometric facial imaging for Queensland Transport’s new smartcard drivers license; end user services and multisourcing management for the Australian National Audit Office and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC); biometric solutions as part of the DIAC Enhanced Border Control Program; and various IT services to the Australian Department of Defence such as regional information and communication technology services to 460 defense locations across the country. Unisys combines local and global expertise to provide services-led, technology-based solutions to the public sector with specific expertise in Asia Pacific in supporting national security and law enforcement initiatives.

About Unisys

Unisys is a worldwide information technology company. We provide a portfolio of IT services, software, and technology that solves critical problems for clients. We specialize in helping clients secure their operations, increase the efficiency and utilization of their data centers, enhance support to their end users and constituents, and modernize their enterprise applications. To provide these services and solutions, we bring together offerings and capabilities in outsourcing services, systems integration and consulting services, infrastructure services, maintenance services, and high-end server technology. With more than 27,000 employees, Unisys serves commercial organizations and government agencies throughout the world. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements rely on assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. In particular, statements in this release regarding the anticipated value of the contract assume that the contract will continue for its full term. As the agreement is terminable for convenience by NSW Police before the end of its term, the estimated value of the engagement is not guaranteed. Additional discussion of factors that could affect Unisys future results is contained in periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

RELEASE NO.: 0617/8997
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/news_a_events/06178997.htm

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