Changes Underway For A Unified, Integrated Policing System In Country: Amin-Ul-Haque

Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Amin-Ul-Haque, on Friday, said that MoITT was making a major change in the decades old Policing system through its "Crime Analytics and Smart Policing in Pakistan (CASPP)" initiative aimed at a unified and integrated Policing system

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Aug, 2022 ) :Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Amin-Ul-Haque, on Friday, said that MoITT was making a major change in the decades old Policing system through its "Crime Analytics and Smart Policing in Pakistan (CASPP)" initiative aimed at a unified and integrated Policing system.

The minister, in his message to Inter Provincial Conference tiled 'Smart Policing in Digital Age' held here, informed that the government was striving to improve quality of life and economic well-being of its citizens by ensuring availability of accessible, affordable, reliable, universal and high quality ICT services.

The conference was attended by Deputy Inspector Generals and Head of Police IT Departments from all four provinces, AJK and Gilgit Baltistan, DG safe City Islamabad, Director National Police Bureau, officials from Ministry of IT, and Telecom and PITB.

He said CASPP project was initiated and funded by Ministry of IT & Telecom and executed by Punjab Information Technology board (PITB) with major objectives of rolling out the technology initiatives of police in provincial capitals and developing an analytics umbrella for predictive policing.

"In the first phase, the different core systems have been implemented in the provincial capitals including Islamabad, Gilgit and Muzaffarabad, the IT minister said adding that police station record, registration of FIR, human resource, complaints, criminal record, hotel and traveller monitoring and public facilitation were automated through digital management systems under the project.

Highlighting the overall impact of CASPP, the minister said that the establishment of the first National Criminal Database with 1.5 million criminal profiles and first National Crimes Database with 6.5 million crimes recorded- besides initiation of the first Integrated Criminal Justice System and development of the first AI based Predictive Policing Systems has improved service delivery to public along with provision of a platform for research and development.

"The public has positively responded to significant improvements within the Police Departments and MoITT plans to increase the scope of these initiatives in other cities across Pakistan", the minister stated.

Additional Director General PITB Asim Iqbal while addressing the conference said that more than 700 police stations of Punjab had been digitised while various digital apps had also been developed under the project.

He said that all the apps developed for digitisation of policing being bought under one umbrella with a vision of 'One nation- One system'.

Director Digital Transformation, MoITT Muhammad Yasir said that a data governance policy and a data protection bill were on the cards. He maintained that all the provincial police departments were controller and owner of their respective data.

He informed that federal cabinet had already approved cloud policy and Sindh has almost done it while other provinces were in completion process.

DIGP Khurram Iqbal of Azad Jammu Kashmir Police, Director IT KP police Naveed Gull, Director IT ICT Police and Naseer Ahmed Nisar DIG HQ Gilgit Baltistan Police briefed the conference on digital initiatives, their application and benefits.

They stressed on data sharing among different law enforcement agencies so that all the LEAs have access to information of criminals and crimes recorded.

DIG Gwadar, Capt � Azfar Mahesar informed that all the police stations in Balochistan had been computerised and FIR registration been digital while Hotel Eye and travel Eye software were deployed across the province.

DG Safe City Islamabad Romail Akram stressing on data sharing and its benefits said that there must be data integration among all the safe cities of the country so that criminal elements could not consider themselves safe anywhere across the country.

DIG IT Sindh Police Pervaiz Ahmed Chandio said the Sindh police started digitisation process some 15 years ago and developed indigenous capacities in the regard as well. In total 29 digital initiatives were planned and 21 of them were launched so far including seven PITB sponsored initiatives, he added.

Highlighting the importance of data access for better service delivery he suggested to set up a central data sharing and coordination desk.