Sharing Minimum Datasets
To undertake the daily business of your partnership, and particularly to produce the strategic assessment, you need to have the right information available. The new duty to share depersonalised datasets sets out the minimum required of partners. While it is only necessary to share the datasets specified in Appendix J on a quarterly basis, there are clear operational benefits to sharing all or some of the information more frequently. Most notably, it will allow the partnership to respond more quickly to new trends and patterns in crime as they occur.
To satisfy the duty to share information, it has to be shared with the other Section 115 relevant authorities in electronic form. Partnerships will need to decide locally on the best way to satisfy this requirement. In many cases, this could be through disclosure to a central hub to which all relevant authorities have access. Alternatively, the requirement could be met by the disclosure of the information to each relevant authority individually.
The format of the data will also need to be agreed locally and will depend largely on the format in which it is recorded. Where possible, using geo-coded location data allows for better analysis across a number of datasets and sharing the information in open text-delineated form means it can be more easily analysed. Local partners will need to agree how best to cleanse and analyse the data.
