The NSW Police is currently undertaking a major upgrade to its information infrastructure, made necessary due to the "exponentially increasing" volume of data handled by the force. Attributing some of the increase to the higher volume of digital evidence in the form of multimedia content, such as surveillance videos and audio material, Rooke said the higher capacity network will more efficiently archive and transmit evidentiary material. A new data centre has also been established to mitigate risks posed by potential terrorist acts against police information systems, and assist in disaster recovery and avoidance, Rooke said. While the deployment of open-source technology is not a stated goal of the initiative, the chief information officer said the force has been dipping its "toe in the water" with open source tools and operating systems and is assessing their potential.
"That's just a parallel activity," he said. "As our knowledge of open-source grows... we'll make a decision as to whether to incorporate it into our strategy."
Although the organisation is still studying the total cost of ownership of open-source systems, Rooke said "no difference in effort to configure or support" had yet been noted, and "to date, in the systems that we've used, they've been just as reliable as the proprietary systems".
Linux had been used in "non-mission critical" environments, and some open-source application development tools are being used, he said.
An upgrade to the network's standard operating environment, which currently consists of Windows 98 based machines, will be undertaken, with the police force opting for Windows XP.
"[Windows] 98 is an insecure environment and more difficult to support," he said. "The cost efficiencies and extra security features in XP will help us."
Rooke said the police force is moving away from a mainframe environment, and will put in place "best practice" server technology.
A great deal of attention is being placed on security, Rooke said. A higher proportion of police systems will face the Internet, which will "bring its own challenges," he explained.
"We treat that very seriously. The systems are architected in such a way to ensure there's extensive auditing," he said.
The second data centre, designed and built by NCR, will replicate data from the police force's other centre. If one site goes down for any reason, the other will be able to operate independently until faults are diagnosed and repaired.
For an article titled "NSW Police investigate Linux", the word Linux is mentioned only once in this article.
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