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most organisations, easy access to information is important because
of internal customer service requirements or operational efficiency
targets. However, when it comes to Police Authorities storing and
accessing information, then the repercussions of documents being
hard to locate can be altogether more serious, while their security
remains of paramount importance at all times.
So when Dorset Police took the decision to scan and
index several years’ worth of child protection files, they
needed to find a company with very specific qualities to ensure
the absolute security of this information. Central to these requirements
were that the personnel handling the files needed to have been security
vetted - more than this, due to the highly sensitive nature of the
information they contained, this vetting needed to have been carried
out within the previous 18 months to be valid.
Fortunately, Preview has worked with several Police Forces on various
projects relating to sensitive material over the course of the last
three years. As a result, they were able to provide staff who had
been fully vetted within the previous year, hence complying easily
with the requirements. Since no additional verification was therefore
required, they were able to progress the work for the Dorset Police
quickly and smoothly.
There were still a number of additional requirements
which placed certain functional constraints on the staff working
on the project. The cataloguing of the documents needed to be carried
out on site during working hours – so to ensure that this
was done quickly and in line with the timeframes laid down for the
project, a team of 6 people was used to carry out the work. This
was essential as access to the files was also restricted to normal
working hours for the prepping, scanning and Quality Control stages.
However, with this team in place, Preview was able
to work within these requirements and deliver a fully scanned and
indexed set of documents which contained some 600,000 images. These
now allow Dorset Police instant access and, at the same time, tight
control over the information that they contain, giving them the
ability to respond quickly and with certainty to questions relating
to their contents.
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