Chief Executive Officer's Welcome

Police Ministers and Police Commissioners have defined an ambitious and challenging mandate for the Agency, with a new vision:

CrimTrac will take a leadership role in generating national approaches to information sharing solutions for law enforcement agencies, for a safer Australia.

This vision is contained in the CrimTrac Strategic Plan 2007-2010 approved by Australia’s Police Ministers in November 2006.

CrimTrac Strategic Plan 2007-2010 (PDF - 4.10MB)

The vision recognizes the desire of Police Commissioners and Ministers for CrimTrac to move beyond being purely an ‘IT shop’ to being an organization which plays a leadership role in problem-solving and negotiation around information sharing.  National problems demand national solutions and for policing, it means CrimTrac must do everything it can to deliver timely and accurate information to Australia’s 50,000 police officers wherever they are across the country.

A recent example of CrimTrac’s more proactive role relates to the work the agency has done to increase the use of the National Criminal Investigation DNA Database (NCIDD). While the database has been ready for use since 2001 technically, a range of non-technical issues has stalled its full utilisation.  Policy and legal issues associated with the sharing of DNA profile information across Australia’s state and territory borders have been the major impediments, but late last year CrimTrac hosted a successful workshop of legal, police and forensics personnel which resulted in significant progress towards resolution of the outstanding impediments. I am quietly confident that the NCIDD will be delivering to its full potential by the end of this year.

The new vision also positions us to focus more attention on the challenges of recital E of our Inter-Governmental Agreement, giving us a leading role in identifying and addressing emerging policing information sharing requirements.   In practical terms we are doing this by identifying a range of existing and emerging technologies and preparing discussion papers for consideration by our Board of Management and by Police Ministers.  A couple of examples we have already addressed are Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and Familial Matching using the NCIDD.  Adaptations of these existing technologies have huge potential to assist Australia’s police services in crime prevention, reduction and detection.  There are, of course, significant privacy issues which need to be addressed in relation to adoption of any new technologies for law enforcement purposes and we have committed to undertake Privacy Impact Assessments as part of our scoping exercises regarding any new applications.   

The agency has a significant menu of work ahead of it. By early 2009 the National Police Reference System - Person Profile (NPRS) will be fully rolled out across the country, giving Police immediate access to far richer information concerning persons of interest.  A scoping study is underway to assess possible enhancement of missing persons functionality within the NPRS as well as our DNA and fingerprint (NAFIS) systems. This very important work will address specific recommendations in the report of the Palmer Inquiry into the Cornelia Rau matter. 

We are also actively engaged in examining options for managing the ever-increasing demands for criminal background checking more effectively and efficiently. A business case and an implementation plan are being prepared, focussed on moving to a centrally managed model for delivery of these important services.

In the past twelve months we have restructured the organisation and have recruited additional staff across several skill-sets in the IT software and systems development arena and also in fields such as Business Analysis and Project Management. We have also introduced the ‘Managing Successful Programs’ methodology across all of our business to ensure we have the best governance models. The agency hopes to become recognised in time as a centre of excellence in project management, and an employer of choice.

Data security and data integrity are critical issues for us as an organisation, particularly as our very existence depends upon us continuing as a trusted information broker.  These matters remain at the forefront of our minds as we continue towards delivering on our guiding principles of being ‘responsive’, ‘innovative’ and ‘accountable’.

Ben McDevitt AM APM
Chief Executive Officer