The Single Online Home (SOH) is a national web-based platform that functions as a digital front counter for members of the public. This platform offers a standardised and consistent citizen experience and covers a broad range of online services, including forms for:
- Reporting crimes
- Reporting missing persons
- Reporting road traffic incidents
- Firearms licence applications
The iHub functions as an integration platform that enables Single Online Home (SOH) to deliver digital forms and related media attachments to the correct police force and force systems in the required format:
To enable the delivery of a resilient service integrating Single Online Home with individual forces, the iHub focuses on:
- Standardising form submissions for all Single Online Home services into a "Standard Data Model".
- Streamlining the delivery channels for "Standard Data Model" payloads to client forces by focusing on API integrations.
This ensures a robust solution that can enable automatic and accurate data transfers from Single Online Home services to client force systems.
"Standard Data Model" is a single data model that supports all integrated Single Online Home services. This data model aligns where possible to the POLE (Person, Object, Location, Event) standards for data reporting, published by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) and Police Digital Service (PDS).
By standardising the data model for Single Online Home services inside the iHub, forces are empowered to develop re-usable integrations that can receive data from multiple Single Online Home services using a single data model. This can reduce the number of point-to-point integrations required by forces which helps to reduce resourcing demands, reduce support costs, and decrease force onboarding times.
Further detail on the Standard Data Model can be found in section 3 of this documentation.
To facilitate the delivery of Standard Data Modeled (SDM) payloads to client forces, the iHub offers two delivery channels:
- Email submissions
- Standard API (API Integration Services)
For supported SOH services, email submissions can be used to make submitted Single Online Home forms available to forces in the Standard Data Model. This brings the benefits associated with standardising multiple Single Online Home services into a single data model.
The API Integration services builds on these benefits and automates the transfer of Standard Data Model payloads to client forces. This solution requires forces to establish an API capable of receiving the Standard Data Model payloads that conforms to the specification outlined in this documentation. This API is referred to as a "Standard API".
This service offers a near real-time integration between SOH and force systems, giving faster access to submitted cases for forces and enabling them to map this data directly into their local systems as required.
In addition to the above delivery channels, custom integrations are being developed from the SDM to a limited number of major national policing systems.
The following Single Online Home services are currently supported by the Standard Data Model (SDM) and the described integration mechanisms. If a service is checked as "Service Partly Supported by Standard Data Model", not all forms within that service have been integrated with Standard Data Model.
| Single Online Home Service | Service Fully Supported by Standard Data Model | Service Partly Supported by Standard Data Model | Supports Submission of SDM Payloads by Email | Supports Submission of SDM Payloads into Standard API |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online Crime Reports | ☐ | ☑ | ☐ | ☑ |
| Thanks & Complaints | ☐ | ☑ | ☐ | ☑ |
| Contact Us | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Missing Person | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Feedback | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Road Traffic Incident | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Anti-Social Behaviour | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Online Service | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Clare's Law (CL) | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Firearms Application | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Partner Service | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Domestic Abuse | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Freedom of Information | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Manual | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Sarah's Law (SL) | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Terrorist Activity (ATH) | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
- *Online Crime Reports: The following forms are supported by Standard Data Model: SDA, BCA, DA, DP, ROC, SA, SD, SP, and TAA. The following forms aren't currently supported by the Standard Data Model: TV1, TV2, TV3, and TVH.
All Single Online Home services will be incorporated into the product roadmap for future development.