The Digital Landscape in UK Law Enforcement
The nature of policing is changing at pace. As the Policing Vision 2025 recognises, “as people do more and more online, the threat from cybercrime grows”. Future technologies will introduce new risks and opportunities for the police service. To meet these challenges, policing must develop new tactics and capabilities, underpinned by secure and adaptable digital infrastructure.
Technology now sits at the heart of modern policing. The Vision highlights that “the increasing availability of information and new technologies offers us huge potential to improve how we protect the public”, setting new expectations about service accessibility, transparency, and efficiency. From accelerating business processes to revolutionising the criminal justice system, digitisation is essential.
National Policing Digital Strategy
The National Policing Digital Strategy 2025–2030, the digital roadmap that enables the Policing Vision 2025, states “the challenges we face are stark; outdated legacy systems which are costly to maintain, poor quality data that cannot be utilised and a fragmented policing model built before borderless cyber-crime existed. This, combined with severe digital skills gaps, a lack of interoperability and a rising tide of public demand leaves us vulnerable as a service.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) have outlined in the strategy that they must work together collaboratively, across local policing, national law enforcement organisations and private industry to identify ways of delivering scalable, national services at pace.
In further detail, Ambition 4 ‘Collaborating with the private sector’ will ensure they have a role in enhancing public safety, through securing effective contracts that deliver timely and budget-compliant solutions. Through early engagement in problem definition and solving, we will leverage industry expertise to address issues innovatively using data and technology. This approach will support policing to be an ‘intelligent digital customer’ by lowering barriers to enter the market and avoiding risk of ‘vendor lock-in’ through use of key artefacts, such as the Police Industry Charter.
One way they outline how to achieve this ambition is to ‘replace outdated and inefficient systems like the Police National Computer with cloud-based, scalable, and interoperable solutions.’
Governance: Industry
Since the launch of the National Policing Digital Strategy in 2020, progress has been slowed by competing local priorities, complex governance, legacy systems, and the lack of interoperability between technologies. To drive the strategy forward, a few critical areas must be addressed:
- Collaboration is essential– Local forces, regional teams, and national bodies must align and work together to break down silos and deliver on the strategy’s ambitions.
- Partnership with industry– Police services at every level need to draw on industry expertise to design and deliver secure, compliant systems. This means establishing reliable contractual frameworks that enable long-term progress.
- Clear standards– Industry needs well-defined, accredited minimum standards, created jointly with policing. These standards provide clarity, build transparency and accountability, and ensure that every system and service delivered meets the same trusted baseline.
Most recently, Nine23 has been actively involved in shaping this dialogue as part of the Justice and Emergency Services TechUK working group. We are contributing to a paper on interoperability in Law Enforcement, helping to review and steer the definition of repeatable services that will enable true cross-force and cross-agency collaboration. This engagement reflects our commitment to supporting policing with secure, scalable, and standards-driven solutions.
Home Office Digital, Data and Technology
In July 2025, Nine23 attended the Home Office Digital, Data and Technology Supplier Conference at TechUK, which highlighted the Home Office 2030 Digital Strategy. The strategy focuses on securing technology to tackle growing cyber security threats and improve how data is captured and shared data across the Home Office.
The Director of Police and Public Protection Technology Portfolio also shared their Digital Transformation Vision. This included transitioning to a cloud-hosted ecosystem, building a connected digital platform for policing, replacing the Police National Computer (PNC) with LEDS by 2026, and driving improved data sharing across the Criminal Justice System.
These priorities closely align with the ambitions of the National Policing Digital Strategy in particular, the need to deliver interoperability across the Criminal Justice System through seamless data sharing. For Nine23, this reinforces the critical role of secure, cloud-based platforms like FLEX Pathway in turning these strategies into operational reality.
Enabling Pillars
The strategy sets out seven Enabling Pillars that underpins digital transformation. For the purpose of this blog, we are going to focus on a few relevant enabling pillars.
Enabling Pillar 3: Modernised Core Data and Technology
The NPCC must take every opportunity to reduce the complexity, environmental impact and cost resulting from legacy data and technology infrastructure. They seek to modernise their DDaT estate, both physical and virtual, ensuring systems, datasets and core equipment are fit for purpose.
Local priority
Leaving legacy – Phased transition from outdated digital infrastructure and datasets to modern solutions which meet minimum acceptable digital standards, at the earliest commercially viable opportunity.
National priority
Digital standards – Manage system of minimum acceptable digital standards across policing, promoting sustainability, interoperability, transparency, and responsibility.
Industry priority
Fit for future – Develop digital products and services which align with minimum acceptable digital standards.
Enabling Pillar 4: Connected technology
They must empower their officers and staff with data and information when and where they need it, with interoperability at the core of connected technology enhancing operational effectiveness and engagement with citizens through direct insights and functionality. This will see policing realise greater benefit from advancements in technology such as those around the use of artificial intelligence.
Local priority
Solve once – Local innovations should prioritise seamless integration of data and technology to ensure they contribute towards a national architecture approach to greatest benefit realisation.
National priority
Guide interoperability – Invest in the development of seamless data sharing and integration between different systems and agencies.
Industry priority
Commitment on standards – Work with policing and other private sector organisations, to develop and implement national digital standards around interoperability as standard.
Enabling Pillar 5: Risk and Security
They must maintain public trust by securing our data and by applying a consistent, proportional approach to risk across digital policing.
Local priority
Balancing risk – Manage risks effectively by cultivating the necessary skills and culture to secure their data and technology.
National priority
Defending as one – Protecting policing against attacks, detecting security events and minimising the impact of incidents.
Industry priority
By design – Implement Secure by Design practices from the outset of any product development cycle, ensuring detection use-case enablement is integrated into the development process to contribute towards cyber resilience.
Enabling Pillar 7: Open Digital Marketplace
They must cultivate a vibrant, competitive and open digital market that drives value and innovation to solve real-world policing challenges in a responsible way.
Local priority
Engage early – Engage with industry and national policing bodies to collectively define policing problems, enabling the digital marketplace to collaborate on developing problems through pre-market engagement into effective solutions for policing, with users at the centre.
National priority
Intelligent customer – Single strategic approach to industry collaboration around policing requirements, benefits, priorities, and procurement.
Industry priority
Bridging the gap – Collaborating with SME’s, trade associations and other members of industry to collectively solve policing challenges and scale strategically supported innovations into production.
From Strategy to Delivery: The Role of FLEX Pathway
The ambitions set out in both the Policing Vision and the National Policing Digital Strategy are clear. What is equally clear is that they cannot be achieved without secure, scalable, and interoperable infrastructure – infrastructure that reduces reliance on outdated systems, supports interoperability, and enables policing to become an intelligent digital customer.
This is where FLEX Pathway – Secure Cloud for Connected Policing comes in.
FLEX Pathway has been designed to meet policing’s most pressing digital priorities:
- Modernised Core Data and Technology
FLEX provides a secure, cloud-based platform that allows forces to phase out legacy infrastructure and datasets. By aligning with nationally agreed minimum digital standards, it delivers a consistent, sustainable environment that is both fit for purpose today and flexible for tomorrow. - Connected Technology
Interoperability sits at the core of FLEX Pathway. It enables seamless integration of data and technology across local, regional, and national policing – ensuring that information is available when and where it is needed. This empowers officers and staff to act decisively, supported by real-time insights and the latest advancements in technology such as AI and advanced analytics. - Risk and Security
Secure by Design is embedded into FLEX Pathway, ensuring that sensitive policing data is protected against evolving cyber threats. The platform supports national ambitions to “defend as one,” providing resilience, real-time monitoring, and incident response capabilities that maintain public trust. - Open Digital Marketplace
FLEX Pathway lowers barriers to innovation by providing a common, standards-based environment where policing can collaborate with industry. By adopting the “buy once” principle, it enables reusable solutions at scale, avoiding duplication and reducing costs. This supports a vibrant ecosystem of SMEs and trusted partners to deliver cutting-edge services that can be deployed nationally.
Law Enforcement Industry
Modern law enforcement isn’t limited to the 45 territorial police forces. While information is already shared between other law-enforcement agencies, there is a much wider community of partners involved in National Security – including regulators, local authorities, other Government Agencies, and private-sector supply chains that deliver digital services. Each of these organisations holds critical data or provides essential services tied to national safety legislation, such as Martyn’s Law and the Security and Resilience Act.
It is through the ability to connect and securely exploit this breadth of data that policing can achieve real transformation – enhancing national security, improving public safety, and enabling faster, more informed decision-making.
However, sharing this data across multiple organisations with differing compliance regimes is complex. Traditional infrastructure was not designed for real-time, cross-organisational collaboration. Public cloud alternatives can introduce new risks, such as data egress fees, loss of sovereignty, and compliance uncertainty.
This is exactly the gap that FLEX Pathway: Secure Cloud for Connected Policing is designed to fill. Built with interoperability, compliance, and UK Sovereignty at its core, FLEX Pathway enables police forces and their wider ecosystem of partners to securely share and access data in real time. It replaces the limitations of legacy infrastructure with a modern, scalable platform built to meet the stringent requirements of law enforcement and national security.
Our role in the TechUK interoperability paper reinforces this mission. By working alongside policing leaders, government stakeholders, and industry partners, Nine23 is directly contributing to the frameworks that will underpin the next generation of connected law enforcement services. FLEX Pathway is not only aligned with these principles but demonstrates how they can be delivered in practice.
At Nine23, we believe that success lies in combining secure by design, scalable infrastructure, and true interoperability to deliver national capability that is locally accessible. That is exactly what our FLEX Pathway: Secure Cloud for Connected Policing provides – a trusted, UK sovereign platform that empowers end-users to share, innovate, and protect the public with confidence.
The 2030 vision will only be realised through strong partnerships between policing and industry. With FLEX Pathway, Nine23 is committed to being more than a supplier – we are a strategic partner, helping the UK Law Enforcement industry embrace the opportunities of digital transformation while safeguarding the principles of security, compliance, and public trust.
