Would your Force or area collaboration be interested in a free computer GTD package? We’re working on a proposal, and we’d like to know how many forces could potentially benefit.

As part of the Transforming Forensics CSE (Child Sexual Exploitation) Automate project FCN Science produced ground truth data (GTD) for testing and validating the automated workflows for capture and preservation, processing, and analysis of data from digital media. These items covered a range of hardware, operating and file systems, data categories, file types and digital forensic image file formats.  

To make sure this work benefits the whole of the policing digital forensics community we’re putting together a proposal to share this GTD with any interested and eligible entities to support their computer validation work.  

If the proposal is successful and your organisation has submitted an expression of interest, we aim to provide you with a package containing the physical items, files and supporting documentation which should be sufficient* to allow a Digital Forensic Unit to validate methods for physical capture and preservation, processing, and analysing data from Microsoft Windows 10 and 11, as well as several combinations of media types and files systems. 

Please note this project is still subject to approval and funding. At this stage we only need expressions of interest to help us develop the proposal and the scope could be subject to change.

To register an EOI on behalf of your Force, please complete this form. We strongly recommend that you discuss this at management level first, to avoid multiple EOIs being submitted for your Force. The deadline for EOIs is 17th June.

If you’d like to discuss this further, please contact Simon Cullen  Simon.Cullen@dorset.pnn.police.uk

*A key element to validation is in identifying end-user requirements and a detailed specification of what needs to be tested. The GTD provided should cover the common user requirements but it’s important that each force assesses any externally provided GTD against their own end-user requirements and specification for suitability.  In the case where the provided GTD is not wholly sufficient it will still be a solid foundation for validation. Additionally, we will supply the processes, scripts, and procedures to allow any force to uplift the GTD to address any gaps.