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Police National Database (PND) Interface Business and Technical Guidance for Data Providers v3.5.0

This document provides:
• High level PND requirements
• Overview of Data requirements
• PND Message Schema design
• Data transmission mechanisms
• Data Scope
• Overview of software resources available including Data Test Suite.

Note this document is graded OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE, access can be requested by the 'Contact Us' tab at the top of the page.

Published 18/09/2020
Authoring body: Home Office
Guidance
Resource
UK Gov Cookie Cutter Data Science Project Template

This is a data science cookiecutter template for analytical, Python-, or Python and R-based projects within Her Majesty's Government, and wider public sector including policing, where it has been trialled and used as a standardised template for effectively sharing data science work and includes security features using pre-commit hooks to preserve sensitive information.

It also provides an Agile, centralised, and lightweight analytical quality assurance (AQA) process. Pull or merge request templates are used to nudge users to complete this process. This helps meet HM Government best practice on producing quality analysis, as defined in the Aqua Book.

The original developer in GDS has provided a blog post explaining the reasons for creation and provided a live demonstration from March 2021 on version 0.5.3

The National Standards Assurance Board reviewed this in January 2022 and found it being owned and actively developed by the Office for National Statistics, Best Practice and Impact team.

Published 20/07/2021
Authoring body: Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Reference Data / Templates
Resource
Open Source Software - Exploring the Risk (Good Practice Guide 38)

This guidance seeks to assist a range of IA professionals in exploring the risks associated with the use of Open Source Software (OSS) products. It does so by prompting a number of ‘whole lifecycle’ issues and questions which potential users should ask themselves when making software choices, not just of OSS, but also of proprietary products. This is because there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers when it comes to the security of OSS versus that of proprietary (typically closed source code) products. There are good and bad examples of each in this respect and no one type is inherently more, or less, secure than the other.

This guidance supports the Government ICT StrategyI objective of creating a level playing field for open source software solutions. It does not evaluate, recommend or otherwise offer judgement on the following:

Specific OSS products;
Savings in running costs that an organisation may realise by the adoption of OSS over proprietary products;
The legal risks that may arise, for example from issues concerning copyright, intellectual property, or infringement of licences

This guidance was reviewed by the National Standards Assurance Board in January 2021 and was deemed to still provide relevant information

Published 01/10/2015
Authoring body: Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) [HMG]
Guidance
Resource
Retention, Storage and Destruction of Materials and Records relating to Forensic Examination

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance on the retention, storage and destruction of forensic materials and their associated records retained by physical and digital Forensic Units.

Published 01/06/2021
Authoring body: National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC)
Guidance
Resource
Biometric Standards and Exchange Requirements for Home Office Partners and their Suppliers v3.04

The purpose of this document is to provide details of the biometric interchange and image standards that must be adhered to by Partner1 organisations and their Suppliers that need to communicate with the back end biometric matching systems governed by the Home Office Biometrics (HOB) programme. (Note that the current HOB systems covered in this document are the HOB Biometric Services Gateway (BSG), Home Office “Immigration and Asylum Biometric System” (IABS) and national police fingerprint system, “IDENT1”.)
The document is divided into five parts as follows:
1) The Home Office biometric exchange format – “HONE-1”
2) Biometric recording and image standards, mandatory
3) Biometric recording and image standards, conditional
4) Biographic data, general
5) Appendices

Published 01/07/2017
Authoring body: Home Office
Standards