The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) is planning to adopt a data virtualisation solution to improve its use of unstructured data.
As has a first step it has put out a market tender notice, with an estimated value of £6 million, for a meta data management solution, citing the need to provide context to and evaluate the sensitivity of its data.
The deal is expected to be broken up into three lots and to run for an initial four years with options to extend for up to another three.
The move derives from Police Scotland holding an estimated 100TB of unstructured data, surpassing its 60TB of structured data, which has to be better organised to support operations and for its value to be fully understood.
Automation imperative
The SPA notice says: “Given the scale of the challenge as well as the requirement to comply with complex regulations, automation and collaboration tools are imperative.
“Data governance, data risk and compliance, data security and data analysis are just some of the key use cases that it is expected that a meta data management capability will help support within Police Scotland. Metadata will provide a means of understanding the breadth and type of information available across the service, its quality, and relevance thereby enabling self-service by providing the right data context for users.
“That capability should be overlaid with machine learning, augmented with human knowledge, and integrated the wider data management processes such as master data management and virtualisation.”
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
