10 February 2006

Activity on an online intelligence tool for the police has boomed, with visits to the database increasing by over a quarter.

Compared to figures taken in January 2005, enquiries or updates to the Police National Computer (PNC) grew by 27 per cent.

This equates to 10,870,276 hits in January 2006 alone with a record number of hits achieved on Wednesday 18th when 444,515 site visits were recorded.

The PNC was set up in 1974 as a way of collating extensive data on criminals, vehicles and property and can be accessed in a couple of seconds by thousands of computer terminals across the UK.

Danny McGannan from PNC said that the success of the computer system was partly due to continual efforts to improve and widen the use of the tool.

For example, in March 2002 a driving licence enquiry tool was set up to provide an online check on licenses, rather than having to submit a postal or phone request to DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency).

The new feature was then used over 500,000 times in the first year of existence, increasing to 2.5 million hits in the last twelve months.

© Adfero Ltd

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