Hello all – I am Alex Carmichael and I'm the Commissioner’s thematic lead on the standards and certification strand of the National Surveillance Camera Strategy. I’ve commandeered Tony’s blog to tell you a bit about myself and what we’re doing on this strand.
I’m the Chief Executive of the SSAIB and have been fully involved in standards for Surveillance Camera Systems since 1998. I’ve chaired Tony’s Standards Group since its inception in February 2013. This Group representation is a cross section of public space CCTV organisations and has worked hard to provide Tony with a standards framework for surveillance camera systems. The standards framework was fairly complicated – the image accompanying this blog is a slide use in presentations to illustrate just that.
But we’ve done much to try and make it simpler and this work will be carried on with the standards and certification strand of the National Strategy.
The high level objectives for the strand will be similar to the Standards Group objectives, namely:
- Create a standards/code of practice framework for surveillance cameras from pressing need to images shown in court.
- Establish certification schemes (self-certification or third party certification) against applicable standards suitable for relevant stakeholders.
- Establish a suite of guidance documents to support standards framework.
- Promotion of standards/certification as best practice for surveillance camera systems.
If you’re familiar with the Commissioner's website you will know that standards and certification requirements for certain sectors of the industry have been identified and published. This is due to the hard work of the all other strategy strands members up to date. Going forward this will continue so we can meet everyone in the sector’s needs.
Some of the work were are currently looking at as part of this strand are an Operational Requirement Manual for Relevant Authorities and a Privacy Impact Assessment for surveillance camera systems and individual cameras. Both these items are due to be completed shortly and I’m sure Tony will blog about them.
Going forward, what else will the standards and certification strand be looking at to complete its wide remit? Well the following have been discussed at meetings recently:
- Operational Requirements for other Pubic Space CCTV Systems (shopping centres, transport, and so on.).
- Standards for Body Worn Video systems (BWV).
- Standards for Surveillance systems in Drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).
- Standards for ANPR.
- Police and Forensic requirements fed into current standards/guidance/training:
- Security Industry Association Public Space CCTV training.
- Installer/maintainer/monitoring standards/guidance.
- Standard/guidance on Police access/data sharing requirements with monitoring centres.
- Certification systems (self-certification and third party certification) against BWV, UAV and ANPR Standards.
- Support to Police and Forensic service on any of their standards they require industry or public space input.
I hope that gives you a good flavour of what we are working on in this strand. All this work is ongoing and working with all the other strands has lead to the success we’ve had so far. One final point we are all aware of is that standards and certification should be affordable, practical and suitable and this is fully taken into account in the work programme.
Looking at the above can you spot any standards gaps or areas where guidance is needed or where you think certification can help to raise standards?
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