Response by Chris Ketley CESG and Peter Rogers, Managing Director QinetiQ Trusted Information Management.

Chris Ketley leads the Research and Technology groups within CESG, the UK National Information Assurance Technical Authority. 

Peter Rogers heads up QinetiQ's information security and assurance division, working across the public and private sectors in the delivery of security services, consultancy and R&D.

The presentation and discussion will be held under the Chatham House rule.

Drinks and light snacks will be provided.

For further information please contact Charlie Edwards

This is a growing concern as criminal networks become more fluid and flexible, while the increased availability of information technology continues to facilitate various crimes and spawn new forms of criminal.

This seminar will seek to answer the following questions:

• What is the nature and scale of the threat posed by organised crime and what threats can be expected in the future?
• Are the current partnerships between governments, national and international organisations adequate in tackling the broad spectrum of threats? 
• How can national agencies and the Police tackle serious and organised crime at the local level?
• How can information be better shared with strategic partners?
• What are the skills required by the pubic and private sectors to meet the challenges posed by organised crime?
  

The seminar will hear from five leading thinkers and practitioners.

Sophie Barrow is a Senior Manager in the International Directorate, Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Detective Chief Inspector Stan Gilmour is Head of Field Intelligence at Thames Valley Police 
Tim Grant is an Assistant Director at Interpol. He is responsible for the development and implementation of organisational protocols and strategic planning/policy.
Professor Dick Hobbs is Professor of Sociology with special reference to Criminology at the London School of Economics.
Ian McCredie is a former British diplomat and is Vice President Corporate Affairs Security, Shell.

George Osborne has promised that an incoming Conservative government would create a level playing field for open source software in the UK, a move that would apparently save £600 million a year. According to the press he reckons that opening up the market in software would enable the Government to slash 5 per cent off Whitehall's annual IT bill, because open software allows users to read, change and improve its code, in contrast to proprietary software where a company controls the source code.

He makes reference to the fact that the Japanese government is moving its entire payroll system over to an open-source platform while last year, in the Spanish region of Extremadura, the administration migrated 70,000 desktops and 400 servers in its schools to open source software, saving over £10 million. He also suggested that "all too often, a government IT system is incompatible with other types of software, which stifles competition and hampers innovation. Like for instance the fact that the Serious Organised Crime Agency is ‘hamstrung by a mass of old, useless intelligence; 380 different IT systems that are incompatible’.

Open source and security are two things you might not expect to go together…yet there are some good examples of how the police and security services are embracing new technologies. The French gendarmerie - the French military police – is switching to Firefox and Mozilla's email client Thunderbird. According to the Head of IT the move to adopt the open source applications is to ensure independence and durability.

While Intellipedia (based on the Wikipedia) system, is currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, and has grown to more than 28,000 pages and 3,600 registered users since its introduction. Less restrictive versions exist for "secret" and "sensitive but unclassified" material. Intellipedia is currently being used to assemble a major intelligence report, known as a national intelligence estimate, on Nigeria as well as the State Department's annual country reports on terrorism, officials said.

And lest we forget the Metropolitan Police Intelligence Division which established an open source intelligence unit.

The seminar will explore the value in creating such a strategy; its impact on how the Government is organised for national security; the scope of a strategy, encompassing the public and private sectors; and its role in communicating the Government’s response to the challenges facing society to the British public.

Speakers

Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies and Vice Principal (Research) King's College
Leon Fuerth, former National Security Adviser to Vice President Al Gore and Research Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University
Sir David Omand KCB, former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, Cabinet Office and Visiting Professor, King’s College London
Charlie Edwards, Security Programme, Demos will chair the seminar