Integrated, trusted and open information is essential for good use of data, Gurchand Singh, chief information officer (CIO) at the Justice Department told the annual conference of the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development.

Within the criminal justice system, data sets have been developed by agencies to support service provision, the conference on 5 October heard.

While this is critical, one of the risks is that data becomes siloed in agencies, and our overall understanding of crime problems becomes partial and segmented, the CIO pointed out.

The Department of Justice, therefore, is developing a data hub to start integrating information, giving it an ‘end-to-end’ analysis of crime problems. 

Data must also be trusted and open. Trust means that data is accurate – it reflects the reality of the phenomena that it seeks to describe, Singh said.

However, trust is also about people having confidence in the processes by which data is captured, and how it is classified. 

To this end, the CIO emphasised the need to be more open and transparent as to how this is done. 

Open data

Open data is recognised as important by the State – the additional social and economic benefits that can be derived from sharing information are recognised by the Government’s Open Data Strategy. 

Therefore, while it is important that data be made available – this needs to be balanced by the rights of individuals to privacy and the protection of their information. Data protection is paramount, therefore, in this context, he said.