Sponsored content: REIGNITING INTELLIGENCE: Towards a Threat-Agnostic Intelligence Capability 

By Seth Cooke, i2

In NPCC Intelligence Lead DCC McLaren’s opening keynote and following summary of the National Intelligence Model landscape review, a further theme was established: the need to move to a “capability-driven, agile, threat agnostic and integrated” i operating model. 

A threat agnostic approach is resilient, emphasises adaptability to the unforeseen, and is defined through modularity, distributedness, diversity and plasticityii. For policing, this means an operational approach that breaks down thematic silos and can quickly adapt to a changing threat landscape. It requires: 

• automated visibility of all known threats 

• swift adaptability to emerging threats 

• accelerated insight into polycriminality and intersectional cross-cohort vulnerability 

• a public health approach to the interconnectedness of threats in communities 

For industry seeking to serve police, this should provoke a paradigm shift. To achieve true agility and resilience, technology providers must deliver platforms that democratise the capability to innovate, extend, adapt and maintain.  

The public purse cannot endure the current proliferation of expensive monothematic solutions, or polythematic solutions that encourage dependency on forward-deployed consultants – nor can policing afford a lengthy project cycle to deliver those solutions when the novel threat is already at the door.  

Instead, a swifter approach is recommended, based on trusted, flexible and explainable architecture upon which police and evidence-based policing partners can swiftly innovate lawful, ethical and safe process automation.   

Becoming threat agnostic requires: 

• Platforms that support self-determination, aligned to the legal, operational and ethical imperative for police to govern, understand and maintain how data is processed.
• Platforms in which evidence-based best practice is incorporated from the outset, where independent evaluation adds value to that strong foundation.
   
• An Operationalisation First ethos, avoiding the Technology Readiness Level Gap of Deathiii where technologies fail due to cost, or lack of explainability or interoperability.
   
• Agile platforms that lower the barrier to entry for swift response to novel threats, in terms of skills to deliver, the commissioning and project cycle, and cost to public purse. 

i2 solutions deliver for the interoperable, threat agnostic landscape of the future. Our approach is informed by the NPCC National Policing Digital Strategy iv v, BlueLight Police Industry Charter vi, our academic partnerships, and our rich history of supporting the international law enforcement community.  

BECOMING THREAT AGNOSTIC: The i2 Approach 

i2 has specialised in threat agnostic risk and analytics since 1990. We provide investigation and intelligence analysis software to more than 1,400 organisations in over 100 countries. This includes all UK territorial police forces, regional and national units; 70% of NATO member states; and all FVEY collaborators. We provide the common language for intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies and trusted partners. 

i2 is renowned for network analysis. This is the discipline that lets you intervene early by mapping and understanding nuanced polythematic risk and vulnerability across whole communities; comprehend complex conspiracies in communications data; chart malign influence in online social networks; and innumerable other applications.  

For policing, it is not enough to measure the threat harm risk and vulnerability of individuals. i2 lets you adopt a threat agnostic public health approach to relational risk across communities of associated individuals. Crime is relational; the relationship between offender and victim; exploiter and exploited; and emerging vulnerable cohorts defined by relationships with those who put them at risk. i2 depicts and analyses this, allowing you to task smarter with insight into organised crime groups, gangs and co-offender groups, as well as influencers, brokers and gatekeepers. This maximises the value of your low volume, high harm intelligence – multiplying it by the power of everything known about the threat agnostic social network.  

Numerous evidence-based studies have been wholly undertaken using i2 software, or using techniques that can be readily operationalised using i2. Examples include child sex trafficking, high harm co-offender relationships, the Police National Database, wargaming, and knife crime.  Our Academic Programme offers free use of i2 software for teaching and research. Our partnerships include the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing and Journal of Applied Operational Intelligence . We take your literature seriously, have invested in the future of research, and provide an immediate pathway to operationalising your evidence-based best practice.

In the UK, law enforcement, government partners and defence collaboratively minimise and simplify i2 software, services and training costs via a single contract administered by BlueLight Commercial. When you deploy an i2 investigative and intelligence database solution, you only need to engage us in initial delivery. Our pre-existing, reusable templates for common systems such as Niche, Connect, Storm, and Compact make this quick and cost-effective. After that, we enable you to have full autonomy and flexibility to innovate and automate your response to current and novel threats at your own pace, with your own resources and skills. 

i2 platforms provide spacious headroom for innovation and extensibility. You can swiftly govern, create and maintain your own complex process automation and prioritisation for any established or novel threat – in a way that is transparently explainable and operationalisable. Third party datasets can be made accessible, whether they originate from trusted partners or for Internet Intelligence and Investigations. Moreover, you can integrate with the broad capabilities that you already own – including those provisioned under the National Enabling Programme. 

In the next section, we will show you examples of i2-driven process automation, integrated with third party dashboards – accelerating Strategic, Early Intervention, Tactical and Operational processes. 

AUTOMATE, ADAPT, ACCELERATE: Bring Your Own Dashboard, Powered by i2 

In these examples, the i2 platform has automated numerous processes to generate polythematic risk scores. We’ve chosen Child Criminal Exploitation, Child Sexual Exploitation, Drugs, Knife Crime and Violence as examples. You can quickly and easily automate whatever you need. 

This video demonstrates i2 powering a strategic service commissioning process. Dynamic axes allow you to compare polythematic risk for any two boroughs. All scores are shown side-by-side for every person, delivering threat agnostic nuance. Children at the intersection of multiple thematics are then networked in i2, providing insight into emerging risk transmission across the whole community.

The result is threat agnostic insight, because all thematics can be viewed alongside each other – and you can swiftly build new automations to understand novel threats.  

We will provide initial technical enablement to help set up your environment, alongside lessons from experience for processing data in a lawful, ethical, responsible manner. While i2 will always be available to support and advise, we will empower you to do this yourselves and with your academic partners, applying evidence-based best practice. 

It’s important that you can bring your own dashboard …This demonstrates explainability and early intervention. Explainable analytics can be trusted; trusted analytics can be operationalised. We name the i2-driven indicators that explain the person’s risk; add up the total risk of all their associates; and select an emerging cohort of children at risk because of those associations. The dashboard can only list these children – whereas i2 shows the interconnectedness of their relationships.

You can connect i2 to your business intelligence tools. You will have already made choices to invest time and money in Power BI, Qlik, Tableau, or Cognos. We respect that. But the difference between a good dashboard and a poor dashboard is the power of the process automation and information design that happens behind the scenes. Your i2 environment delivers swift, agile power that allows you to be self-determining in how you extend your capabilities – pushing more power into the software you have already chosen. 

Even a good dashboard will only get you so far. If the only tool you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.  

Here i2 is driving a Tactical Assessment dashboard – displaying crime and intelligence data, mapping, peak time and trend data. We select the peak time for violence in a borough across both crime and intelligence, then send that data back into i2. This lets us see the common connections that drive the violence, across any connected entity – people, places, vehicles, phones, and whole co-offender groups

Dashboards assume that every answer can be found through a process of sorting and filtering data. i2 channels insight in the opposite direction. Rather than drilling downward, i2 expands data outwards – delivering the interconnected richness of the full intelligence picture.  

These approaches are two halves of a whole. And because i2 is the engine, you have a single version of the truth driving all intelligence processes across both interoperable technologies. Data from the dashboard is sent back to i2, giving you the actionable insights that can inform tasking processes. 

This shows i2 automations driving an operational process. Telecoms data has been applied for under a drugs operation. i2 attributes the numbers in a manner that instantly highlights their relevance to drugs, but also child criminal exploitation and knife crime. This accelerates hours of research into seconds and obviates polythematic risk. As the telecoms data itself is stored in i2, it can be queried to instantly display communication between phones – then queried again to display what else is known

i2 becomes the valuable operationalisation layer. We are the engine that powers the dashboard. The dashboard accelerates and democratizes high level insight. Then i2 connects the dots, telling you how, why… and so what? 

 FROM NOW INTO THE FUTURE: The Pathway to Empowerment 

All UK territorial police forces, regional and national units can access i2 software via the national agreement delivered through BlueLight Commercial.  

90% of territorial forces can already access the specific licenses required to do everything detailed in this article. Most of these forces already have the right data available, and there isa cost-effective approach in place to assist the remainder. 

The national agreement provides more than just software.  Provision is available to support you on your technical or enablement journey through pre-paid professional services. 

There is increasing readiness for regional convergence. For several regions, much of the track has already been laid and paid for. i2 solutions are cloud-ready, at any scale. 

The i2 view extends nationally and internationally. As the recommendations of the Police Reform whitepaper  are implemented, we stand with you to help you on your journey. 

You may be further ahead than you realise. Contact us to find out. 

A webinar exploring i2’s capabilities is available at: https://www.policeoracle.com/event-calendar/towards-a-threat-agnostic-understanding-of-child-sexual-exploitation-risk-in-groups-gangs-and-complex-networks/

About the author: Seth Cooke is an i2 Technical & Tradecraft Subject Matter Expert. Prior to joining i2, he worked in UK Policing for 17 years, for Hampshire, West Yorkshire and Avon & Somerset, in roles such as Intelligence Analysis, Partnership Business Intelligence Developer, Projects, and Digital Transformation. His specialisms include quantitative approaches to Violence Reduction, Knife Crime, Child Sexual Exploitation, Child Criminal Exploitation, Gang & Organised Crime Conflict, Hate Crime and Antisocial Behaviour. Outside of Policing, he has managed a team of Business Intelligence Developers and worked in Continuous Improvement.

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