Unisys sets up digital photo system for Aussie police

Unisys Corp. is installing a digital imaging management system for the police force in New South Wales, Australia, under a three-year contract with an estimated value of approximately $4.75 million.

The award calls for Unisys to implement and maintain a system that will protect the approximately 1 million digital images taken annually and allow the police force to streamline the sharing of images to save critical time in criminal investigations.

The solution is able to manage and securely archive a large volume of images, stored in a searchable central repository, to make them quickly accessible for law enforcement purposes, company officials said.

Unisys’ Shared Imagery Management System (SIMS) is designed to quickly and securely categorize, archive, search and distribute imagery that the NSW Police Force obtains from forensic-grade photography taken at crime scenes and the many formats of imagery collected from the public.

SIMS will allow investigators to efficiently access and distribute imagery from both sources -- for example, sending photographs of fingerprints to relevant experts or storing closed circuit TV footage retrieved from a shop’s security surveillance system for later analysis.

Forensic experts will be able to use SIMS to upload images from digital cameras, and securely archive encrypted copies in a digital “vault” where the hardware locks the images so they cannot be modified or deleted. The system also tracks the images at every step of the process to ensure forensic integrity.

The NSW Police Force – Australia’s largest police organization covering a diverse population of seven million across more than 500,000 square miles – is the first in the nation to implement a digital imagery system of this scale, the officials said.

Unisys, of Blue Bell, Pa., ranks No. 32 on Washington Technology’s 2009 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.