Delivering digital fingerprint tech for policing

Police Digital Service’s (PDS’s) Digital Fingerprint Capability (DFC) Programme, is making significant progress. It provides policing with a state-of-the-art, national solution for this crucial area of investigating crime.

DFC enables policing to benefit from key strategic opportunities that will improve performance and productivity for policing and forensics nationally, regionally and locally. A Home Office funded capability, with an end-to-end digital suite of tools, integrating with key policing technology and infrastructure. Fingerprints gathered at a crime scene can be processed in real-time, further supported by automation and
functions that enable managers and staff to easily work with huge sets of data, and allocate work efficiently and effectively.

DFC is hosted on PDS Xchange- a secure, national, cloud-based platform, operated and service managed through PDS. Integration with Home Office Biometrics’ IDENT 1 database facilitates access to more than 8.4 million digital fingerprint records.

PDS’ Programme Team collaborates with government, policing and the forensics science community, on the ongoing development and delivery of DFC and Xchange, working to nationally agreed standards (e.g. The Forensic Science Regulator’s Code of Practice).

Estimated conservatively, DFC and Xchange, can save £6.2m in annual fingerprinting costs through time, processing efficiencies and reduced data backlogs.

DFC is continuing to develop, with further enhancements delivered in May. PDS are also seeking further integration opportunities to support operational policing outcomes.

National rollout is progressing during 2024/25 with five early adopters: East Midlands Special Operations Unit; Yorkshire and Humber regional collaboration; South West Forensics Service; Metropolitan and West Midlands police forces.

Further opportunities are being explored to bring DFC to national policing organisations, to achieve a ‘whole public system’ approach for law enforcement, and for the first time, a national crime scene database for fingerprint marks.