The establishment of a country-wide Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS) is an ambitious project which looks to usher appropriate technology in policing in India. This has implications not only for the fast developing realm of all crimes inclusive of cyber-crimes but also for day-to day policing, and is geared to minimize inefficiency in police investigation and bring better coordination within police forces, from the police station level to state headquarters..

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CCTNS in Karnataka – An Experience Worth Sharing
Editorial Note:
The establishment of a country-wide Crime and Criminal
Tracking Network and System (CCTNS) is an ambitious
project which looks to usher appropriate technology in
policing in India. This has implications not only for the fast
developing realm of all crimes inclusive of cyber-crimes
but also for day-to day policing, and is geared to minimize
inefficiency in police investigation and bring better
coordination within police forces, from the police station
level to state headquarters. Even though all Indian states
have signed an MoU with the Ministry of Home Affairs,
Govt. of India to implement this system, consistent
progress has to be witnessed in this project. The article
below summarises the progress made in the CCTNS Project in Karnataka, which is currently at the forefront
of IT usage in Police largely due to the efforts of the Police IT Wing, which has taken tremendous strides in
its actual implementation.
There are many inherent questions when considering this monumental shift. Will the integration of the
CCTNS into daily police business mean that police efficiency will increase? Will it make it more transparent,
less corrupt? Will it decrease the influence of politics on the police? Will it mean that crime statistics will be
collected accurately, and the police response to crime can be better assessed?
This paradigm shift will require dedicated training of staff in huge numbers, and this in turn will require a
huge effort on the part of police organizations by way of ensuring this time is provided for, without impeding
the regular functioning of police duties. To be effective, the CCTNS software will have to be to be used by
frontline officers, most of whom will have to be trained from the Basic IT Awareness Course. Change
Management component is another major requirement to meet the dire need of attitudinal change.This will
present a considerable challenge. .
While the benefits of having the CCTNS in place outweigh the cons, right to privacy has to be respected and
ensured. With so much information at the police’s disposal, the right to privacy of individual citizens becomes
a relevant issue, which has to be dealt at the policy and the technology levels to yield desired results. While
the network is intended for the exclusive monitoring of crime, the thin line between tracking and surveillance,
and invasion of privacy, means that police leadership has to be very careful in how the information is
collected, stored, and used. It is imperative that this path-breaking technology, particularly the aspects of
crime tracking and surveillance, is deployed in a manner which does not infringe the right to privacy.
What is CCTNS
Mobiles have enmeshed Indian lives like never before. Everybody and every organization is in a network of
some kind. Whether that is sufficient to cater to our requirements is another issue. How structured is the
unstructured network? CUG adds some amount of comfort in the commercial GSM/CDMA telephony and
profuse use of conference calls may give you some more addition to your confidence levels. Nonetheless,
this situation is a world away from what is desired in the second decade of the twenty first century when
geography has become history and time & date is automatically stamped by the system and resides on the
server. Analytics is the order of the day whether data or video and integration is taken for granted. Networks
talk for us, we don’t talk about networks. This is the world of plug and play.
Crime & Criminal Tracking Network & System (CCTNS) project is a mission mode project of Government of
India under the National eGovernance Plan, with a funding of Rs 2000 Crores under the planned head and
envisages networking of all Police Stations(14,000) and Police Offices(6,000) in the country and creation
and deployment of a software for the conduct of core police functions resulting in a national database, which
would be dynamic in nature and would provide a satisfactory answer to the present day requirement of split
second response to the information required on crime and criminals. The access to the information required
by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the functional modalities of providing Citizen Centric
Services would be a part of the total package for complete transformation of the prevalent system.
Karnataka is one of four Advanced States for the CCTNS project. Nine Citizen Centric services have been

2. approved by the Planning Commission. In Karnataka these would be eventually integrated into the Police IT
software, interactive citizen centric services would be provided through a Web Portal. CCTNS and Police IT
work as one entity in the state, the bundled services fully complimenting the software and ICT infrastructure
already created, software enhancement is a case in point. Police IT is the CCTNS front end and thus the
software for the state.
Police IT – CCTNS
The article would navigate through the
Karnataka Composite Model, Datacenter,
Network, Police IT, Capacity Building, CCCTNS
today and finally the conclusion wherein the
inherent potential of Police IT is detailed with
precision. The CCTNS delivers the same results
with the State CAS (Core Application Software)
customized with major ERP components.
Composite Model
The way computer projects are executed is
known to all of us. The Karnataka Composite
Model of Computerisation is a need based model
to create and run the systems in perfect shape
and then deploy the software on the
infrastructure thus created and through the
trained manpower. This entails a minimum of a
skeletal data center, creation of a uniform broadband networking, anti-virus and facility management
services, hiring of trainers, multi pronged training – basic and application based for all end users, specialised
training for system administrators, multi organizational workforce,
ERP End to End Software Solution and above all perfect synchronization of all activities and processes. On
the Police IT Professional Management side, real time User Acceptance Tests (UAT) for all the 11 modules,
testing on completion of last Change Requests, setting up of 11 training centers, training of all requisite
types, pilot run for all modules, deployment of 4 modules and integration of Bangalore City Traffic Police
network to the Karnataka State Police Wide Area Network, KSPWAN, was successfully executed. Today this
software is functional in all 30 districts and 4 Commissionerates.
Data Center
Data Center is the nerve centre of the complete integrated system which provides all systemic resources and
acts as an archival resource. Datacenter has the capacity of hosting 5 server racks and 3 network racks
meeting all present requirements and has the capacity to meet scalability requirements for next few years.
Karnataka State Police Datacenter
Network
KSP has the only fully broadband
network owned by any police force in
the country. It is a combination of
MPLS and VPNoBB and thus
provides value for money and right
bandwidth requirement for all the
locations connected to this network.
On the bandwidth side the State
Police Data Center has an
aggregation bandwidth of 16 Mbps,
38 locations are connected with 2
Mbps MPLS leased line connections
and 1400 locations are connected
on VPNoBB 512 Kbps bandwidth.
The Data Center is also provided
with 4 Mbps Internet leased line
which is distributed to 150 locations
across the state.

3. Karnataka State Police Network Architecture
Police IT
Police IT is a comprehensive ERP system providing seamless integration to the day to day operations of the
Police. Police IT in its conceptualization, creation and roll out would have a pioneering impact in the way the
Police in India would go digital in the days to come. The basic features of this software are that, it is based
on a centralized architecture, is bilingual works on a workflow design and has a role based access.
The Police IT software application has 12 modules rolled into one integrated software. The core functions of
Police has three modules namely, Crime, Law & Order and Traffic. The Administration side has another
three modules
namely Finance, Administration and Stores. Armed, Motor Transport and Training provide the ancillary
support and the technical modules are the Wireless and the FSL. Overlaid on these 11 modules is the
Management Information System.
Police IT Architecture
Capacity Building

4. Capacity Building is the overarching umbrella of which training is the major component. The level of
computer training in the Police Training Institutions is not at par is to state the obvious. Quality output should
be the only goal of all the training imparted.
One concerted effort to train all end users under a standardized application training program is the need of
the hour. In Karnataka around 12,000 officers and men have been trained in the application. The training
imparted presently can be broadly divided into:
48 hour Basic Computer Awareness Training
Police IT Application Module Based Training
Specialized Training for System Administrators
CCTNS Today
CCTNS is coterminous with the 11th Plan period, which is in its last financial year. From the Detailed Plan
report to the Project Implementation and Monitoring Report and to the present stage of the selection of the
System Integrator, the project has covered a long way. With National Network to become a reality shortly, the
project is on the fast track. The Core Application Software is due to reach its Pilot stage and the later stages
of the Software Development Life Cycle has to be gone through. The building blocks are falling in place and
bigger picture would be visible shortly. The selection of the right SI and professional project management by
the Project Monitoring Unit at the State and UT level is the only route to success. Though the road map is
available providing utmost precision and clarity, yet it has to be traversed using the right process and has to
end in a robust technical and functional system to meet the requirements, for which it has been created.
Conclusion
The successful completion of this project would take the Police, with the appropriate ERP customization in
CAS( State), to a much higher level of efficiency, near total transparency, all mechanical work would become
redundant, more human resources would be available for core tasks, better investigation, qualitative change
in planning, split second communication, perfect documentation/retrieval, no alibi as the application is role
based, need based passage of information on the website/press/ individuals and tracking of
incidents/facts/details would be flawless. Police IT intends and has already achieved this to a considerable
degree, the final completion would be full synchronization with the CCTNS project’s techno-functional
requirements. This is the future of policing.