Keeping law and order in Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s data

Capturing legacy data

In 2007, Avon and Somerset Constabulary became part of a joint venture called SouthWest One along with IBM, Somerset County Council and Taunton Deane Borough Council. The aim was to modernise the public sector bodies' business processes. By 2009, all of these organisations were using a common SAP® system.

SouthWest One was dissolved in July 2018. EPI-USE Labs was responsible for carving out the data for Somerset County Council and Taunton Deane Borough and ASC inherited the systems, with the legal obligation to delete the SouthWest One data by December 2019.

The solution: Data Sync Manager extracts legacy information in just one weekend

Avon and Somerset Constabulary selected EPI-USE Labs’ System Landscape Optimisation (SLO) to remove the legacy data from their ECC and SRM systems. The remaining systems were either ASC-specific or held data required for legal reasons.

Our SLO team used Data Sync Manager™ to create a test environment and copied only ASC data from the existing production environments. This selection was refined through two further test cycles until only the required data could be copied. In ECC, the selection was made on company codes. This was not an option for SRM but EPI-USE Labs’ knowledge of the data structure allowed us to perform the selection in an automated way.

Once everyone was confident in the data selection, the cutover was completed within a weekend, copying the required data and overwriting the existing production environment. This approach sped up the project significantly and minimised downtime. Only the contained data was changed so it was straightforward for the team to re-establish the production environment.

Successful police back-up

This project has been a success, with the scope completed within the original commercial agreement and planned timelines. The inherited data was removed from the systems to comply with the contractual divestment requirements and GDPR legislation. The project kept business disruption to a minimum during the final cutover and data deletion activities.

Apart from this carve-out project, ASC also uses Data Sync Manager to manage its non-production landscape and the HR team uses Query Manager™ for report creation.

About Avon and Somerset Constabulary

There has been a police force serving the Avon and Somerset area for more than 180 years. In 1835, the Municipal Corporation Act gave towns and cities the power to create their own professional police forces. Bath and Bristol were among the first cities in the country to do this.

Avon and Somerset Constabulary (ASC), as we know it today, was formed in 1974 from the merger of the former Somerset and Bath Constabulary, the Bristol City Police Force and the Staple Hill division of Gloucestershire Constabulary.