The Garda Siochana has commissioned Siemens Business Services to upgrade the Exhibit Tracking System used by the Garda Technical Bureau.
The SQL Server based system, which was originally written by Siemens Business Services in 1995, tracks all crime scene exhibits needing examination by the Technical Bureau, as well as the movement of exhibits to the Forensics Science Laboratory.
An upgrade was deemed necessary in order to improve tracking response time due to the increased volume of exhibits, and also to make the system more user-friendly.
Exhibits such as fingerprints, photography, ballistics, mapping and documents are audited and tracked by the system when they are received into Garda HQ and the system also records the results of tests performed on these exhibits. In addition to tracking exhibits, the system enables Gardai to carry out statistical analysis of information on crimes and exhibits stored in the database.
‘The exhibit tracking system needs to operate 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, as at any time during the process the exhibit may be recalled. It is absolutely critical that the database is 100 per cent reliable in cataloguing evidence as trials depend on the availability of this evidence,’ said Garda Superintendent John Farrelly.
Siemens Business Services says the system has lived up to and exceeded the specifications set for it in terms of scalability and capacity and there are currently upwards of 200,000 cases held on the system. ‘This new upgrade will allow for increased capacity and improved response times, utilising the most recent Microsoft .NET technologies,’ said Derek Wilson, managing director.
25/07/2003
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