The intended purpose of this standard is to promote interoperability and improve the data quality of systems by converging on a common set of POLE data definitions used within Policing. POLE data definitions describe how People, Objects, Locations and Events (POLE) should be formatted. 

There are 44 POLE entities described in this standard including:

• 20 person entities
• 13 object entities
• 5 location entities
• 6 event entities

The standard defines the attributes (field size, format, type) used to create the entities and contains and “entity x attribute map”. It also contains validation rules for these attributes.

This standard is owned by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) and should be regarded as the default data standard for all POLE entities.

Along with the standard, the POLE data model (POLE v1.1.accdb) and data dictionary (POLE data standards - Data dictionary v1.1.xlsx) are also attached below.