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RSS Police.UK takes its first steps

17th February '11

We worked on the design and build of Police.uk for many months, so its launch on February 1st was a major achievement that we’re proud of.

Police.uk is the first of its kind in the world – local policing details and a street-level crime map across all of England and Wales, delivered on time and on budget.

We weren’t just involved in the design of the clear, simple and easy to use public website you see, we also built the entire platform that powers it.

This includes secure systems for police forces to safely upload sensitive data, anonymising that data whilst maintaining its meaning and usefulness, and an API and data store to allow anyone to reuse this valuable data in any way they want.

Launch day was turbulent. Despite preparing the website for a high level of interest it was overwhelmed and for several hours the site was regrettably either very slow or unavailable for a lot of people. We fixed this to cope with the largest volume of traffic later that night when it was featured by just about every news outlet. It worked very well and continues to perform flawlessly with excellent feedback on its ease of use.

Despite some negative press (inevitable given that it’s a government and policing project), the response from UK citizens whom Police.uk caters for has been overwhelmingly positive:

  • Over 80% found the site to be easy to use
  • Over 64% felt better informed about crime and anti-social behaviour
  • Over 54% felt better informed about policing in general

We’re pleased with what we’ve achieved so far but this is just the beginning.


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