Unisys is on the case to rebuild police database

The reincarnation of the police serious crimes database will be rolled out at the start of 1998, following Unisys' success in securing the contract to build it.

Unisys, a minor supplier of the original Home Office Large Major Enquiry System (Holmes), beat McDonnell Douglas Information Systems (MDIS) to the deal.

The project is already behind schedule - the Home Office originally planned to make a decision on the Holmes2 supplier in November 1995.

Holmes2 will allow different police forces to link incident information, a function the original system couldn't offer.

Detective superintendent Ken Grange, Holmes2 project manager, said: 'Before we had to take terminals out and host them on a different force's system.

If both forces had the same supplier there was no problem.'

Four suppliers provided systems for the original Holmes database - MDIS, Bull, Hoskyns and Unisys.

Holmes2 will be run on PCs, unlike Holmes1 which was accessed via dumb terminals. David Betts, Unisys business development manager for justice and safety, said the police had already got most of the hardware it would need.

'Holmes2 will do everything Holmes1 did but it will be much easier to use. They've got the PCs and Unix boxes they need,' Betts said.

Grange described Holmes as a very important part of any major crime investigation.

The system was used in logging information regarding Fred and Rosemary West's crimes in Gloucester, for example.

Each regional Holmes database records details of major local crimes and can potentially save hours of police time when searching for similarities among cases. Holmes2 is intended to be more scalable than its predecessor and will also be used in investigating lesser crimes.

Police forces will start piloting Holmes2 in the autumn.