Thanks to our commitment to quality products and customer service, we have won a number of tenders to provide national solutions to the UK police forces. Our Corvus platform provides the extensible and resilient architecture needed to provide these solutions.

The National Footwear Service (NFS)

The National Footwear Service provides shared footwear intelligence at the national level. The NFS consists of NFRC and NFD, which are described below. Here are some statistics showing the scale of the NFS:

The National Footwear Reference Collection (NFRC)

The NFRC provides an agreed standard of coding footwear patterns across all forces in the UK. This then allows intelligence to be shared between forces and expertise developed in one force is transferable to another. The collection is now one of the biggest police owned collections in the world and is updated on a daily basis. The software provides easy and quick access to a vast collection of images and other reference information regarding footwear that the police have come into contact with. The solution has proved very successful with forces adapting their business practices to utilise the NFRC.

The National Footwear Database (NFD)

Based on the success of the NFRC, Bluestar was commissioned to build the National Footwear Database. The NFD builds on the NFRC to record custody and crime scene marks where they are linked to footwear. These are then used by force intelligence units to try and draw links between crime scenes and people brought into custody. The NFD supports a number of advanced search options to allow all marks to be made useful even if they can’t be coded to a specific footwear pattern. A range of mapping, extract and document options are provided to make it easier than ever to provide footwear intelligence to front line officers.

Tools are also provided to allow forces to connect their source systems to the NFD so that data is seamlessly transferred from their existing internal systems. There can be as little as a one minute delay between data being entered on the source and its subsequent availability for search on the NFD. The NFD has proven so successful there are now around 30 forces sending data automatically from their internal systems. Additionally 5 forces choose to record data by hand. That’s 35 out of the 43 forces in England and Wales. You can read more about TreadMatch, our footwear intelligence solution for Custody here.

The National Injuries Database (NID)

The National Injuries Database (NID) is a specialised unit which does analysis on the injuries sustained by crime victims. Their advanced techniques allow crime scenes to be linked together and offenders tracked across all the forces that operate in the UK. At Bluestar we’re proud to be chosen to provide the NID with the software solutions they need – from recording case work to performing detailed searches of their intelligence repository.

The NID has a requirement to store a large number of high definition images and we provide this function. We also provide extensive search capabilities – beyond formally recorded data – by fully indexing the content of every document attached to every case.

National Extracts

We provide a number of data extracts for our customers. Each extract is customised to reflect the differing business rules in each force, while conforming to national standards. We’re happy to develop extracts ranging from customised reports for small projects with very precise requirements, up to the largest multi-million record extracts. We have no problems providing data to the PND (Police National Database) and the iPLX (Interim Police Local Exchange).

National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS)

We’re proud to be the chosen software development partner for NABIS. Our Forensic Case Management System (FCMS) is built on our Case4 workflow engine and Corvus platform, both configured and ‘tailored’ to the precise needs of the NABIS firearms forensic teams and their customers. Our success with NABIS continues our extensive experience in delivering national solutions with local agility and a tailored fit. Watch this space for a new page with more information!

Bluestar Provides

• Technology powering the National Footwear Reference Collection
• Intelligence and recording functions of the National Footwear Database
• Software used by the National Injuries Database
• Extracts from a number of forces for the PND (Police National Database)
• Extracts from a number of forces for the iPLX (Interim Police Local Exchange)