UK’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau achieves huge efficiencies and transparency deploying ArcGIS Dashboard to share Action Fraud data

First Action Fraud data available to public 

The UK’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) has achieved huge time, cost and performance efficiencies and achieved a first in transparency by a national law enforcement unit since the March 2020 deployment of a Dashboard developed by Esri UK on ArcGIS.  

The ArcGIS Dashboard allows the NFIB to share with each police force and the public up-to- date fraud and cyber crime statistics derived from data received from the public and businesses via its Action Fraud portal.  

The Dashboard saves over 3,500 staff hours equating to £100,000 in costs per annum by replacing individual analysts having to write 86 separate reports twice a year for the 43 regional police forces in the UK on both cyber crime and fraud in their areas.  This process involved sifting over 360,000 lines of data that the NFIB receives over a whole year and the time delay meant the information was frequently no longer actionable. 

Data is now uploaded over 2 -3 days per month onto the Dashboard providing up- to- date statistics that can be interrogated interactively using filters for each individual force and crime profile, and it is openly available 24/7.  Crime statistics are shown over 13 months so that trends over a whole year can be compared to the previous year.  

The Director of Intelligence, NFIB, says:

“The Dashboard delivers timely and actionable information for each police force to understand fraud and cyber crime reporting in their jurisdictions, and simultaneously frees up our intelligence analysts to focus on proactive intelligence work tackling criminal activity.”

The Dashboard also enables the NFIB to promote transparency. This is the first time Action Fraud data has been made available to the public in this way. Transparency is delivering additional time savings by reducing the need for analysts to answer the many information requests the NFIB receives from government departments, the press, academics and internally from leadership teams.

Aylesbury based Esri UK designed the Dashboard in collaboration with the NFIB who were existing users of ArcGIS within The City of London Police, which hosts the NFIB.  ArcGIS provides a geospatial framework for gathering, managing and analysing data. It organises layers of different types of information into visualisations using maps and 3D scenes, revealing patterns, relationships and situations, enabling users to solve complex problems and make informed decisions.

“We are continuing to innovate and our future aims for the Dashboard include adding more granular filters to provide more insightful and actionable information using ArcGIS”, adds the Director of Intelligence in NFIB.   

Chris Gardiner, Customer Success Manager – Public Safety, Esri UK said: 

“We are delighted by the range of tangible benefits the ArcGIS Dashboard has delivered to the NFIB and its many stakeholders. It took just two weeks to develop working in partnership with NFIB, and so to have saved 3,500 staff hours so far is a fantastic result and demonstrates that strong partnerships and simple, yet effective, ArcGIS solutions can transform business processes”.

The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau is the UK’s national economic crime prevention and enforcement agency, responsible for the national cyber and fraud reporting function Action Fraud servicing the public and business, whose data is fed into the NFIB database for analysis.  NFIB analysts assess the risks and threats so they can be acted on, such as Action Fraud issuing public information alerts, or reports for each of the 43 regional forces in the UK to investigate.

The ArcGIS Dashboard can be found here.

Esri UK is the leading provider of geographic information system (GIS) technology, helping businesses become more profitable and public service more efficient through a better understanding and analysis of location-based information.  Esri UK offers an extensive range of GIS technology and professional services and is the only company in the UK providing a complete and entirely integrated GIS solution.

Esri UK has been providing GIS solutions for over 20 years to a wide range of markets including Central & Local Government, Utilities & Telecommunications, Defence & National Security, Education, Public Safety and Commercial.  Customers include the Ministry of Defence, Birmingham City Council, Defra, the Environment Agency, Metropolitan Police Service, Ordnance Survey, RSA Group, Scottish Power and The Crown Estate.

Celia Turner +44 (0)7703 344425, celia@ctpr.co.uk