IBIS South Africa 10 year retrospective

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IBIS South Africa 10 year retrospective
P.R. Gouws
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What will be discussed

• The original status
• Procurement and implementation process
• Integration into work flow
• Challenges faced
• Successes to date
• Future

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Historical background

• All firearm related exhibits were sent to the
  Ballistic Section for examination.
• Exhibits examined and filed in an open case file
  for future reference purposes.
• Until 1992-02-12 all exhibit bullets and
  cartridge cases were compared against open cases
  manually.
• From 1992-02-12 such comparisons were only done
  on request. (Volumes were too high to do it in
  all instances)
• Development of automated Ballistics comparisons
  systems.
• Decision to purchase, taken 1995-6.

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Procurement of the system

• Specifications were drawn up and placed on open
  tender.
• A benchmark was done.
• Accuracy levels were extrapolated and found to be
  of acceptable levels.
• Order for procurement was issued.

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Implementation of the system.

• Installation started during September 1997.
• Ballistics examiners were at first used to
  operate the system.
• Training on the system started with actual
  exhibits.
• First hits were made within 30 days of
  implementation.

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Configuration of the original South African IBIS
system.

• Pretoria
• Three DAS stations and one analysis station
• Durban
• Two DAS stations and one analysis station.
• Port Elizabeth
• One DAS station and one analysis station.
• Cape Town
• One Das station and one analysis
• station.

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Challenges faced since implementation

• Human resources.
• Estimating correct throughput.
• Administration in support of the process.
• Information to be utilized effectively by the
  investigators of crime.

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Human resources

• Loss of personnel.
• Find the work tedious and not challenging enough.
• Limited career scope.
• Workload.

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Addressing the Human resources problem.

• Appoint the correct people.
• Through the correct selection process, we have
  some of the best operators in the world.
• Create more challenges/ opportunities for
  operators.

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Throughput estimation resolved

• Our throughput estimation was accurate for the
  five year period it was intended, some redundancy
  was build in.
• We should however have made lack of redundancy
  after a five year period more visible at an
  earlier stage.

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Administration process.

• The number of exhibits generated in the workflow
  was underestimated.
• Effective archiving system which is conducive to
  easy retrieval, is essential.
• Sufficient administration personnel is essential.
  
• Functions of administration personnel
• Exhibit archiving
• Exhibit retrieval
• Typing of reports etc.

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Information utilization by crime investigators

• Huge investment-little return.
• Crime investigators have to request certain
  correlations.
• We do not have much control over this.
• As discussed by Niel

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Upgrade of the system during 2005

• Pretoria
• Five DAS stations and two analysis stations and
  one Brass Trax
• Durban
• Three DAS stations and two analysis stations.
• Port Elizabeth
• Two DAS stations and one analysis station.
• Cape Town
• Two DAS stations and one analysis station.

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Current status of South African System

• Total number of acquisitions per region
• PTA 248071
• CPT 95271
• PE 51865
• DBN 122691
• Current national acquisitions since September
  1997 517898
• Total number of cold hits made on the system
  5225

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Future of IBIS South Africa

• National correlation system is currently being
  acquired.
• All specimens will now be compared automatically
  with the total national database.
• Three dimensional system will have to be
  considered in future.

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