This week, Hamilton City Council, New Zealand Police and Datacom launched the first phase of the new Serial Number Action Project (Operation SNAP) www.snap.org.nz. This is a community services partnership designed to reduce property offending.
District Commander, Superintendent Allan Boreham, said "In its basic form it provides simple ways for people to record serial numbers and unique identifiers of legitimately purchased goods on an electronic database.
This assists Police in three ways; it enables quick and easy retrieval of serial numbers by owners when reporting lost or stolen property to Police. It enhances the Police National Intelligence Application (NIA) and it assists in the recovery of stolen goods and the identifying of offenders."
While earlier versions of SNAP involved homeowners recording serial numbers, in case they became the victims of burglary, Mr Boreham said, this re-branding offered so much more in terms of alliances with corporate partners who had a sense of community.
The secure website was designed, built and is being hosted by Datacom and allows members of the public to log on and record serial numbers belonging to their high-value assets. They can also associate a description, colour, make/model, and photograph with the serial number. If any property is then lost or stolen, members can then use the website to retrieve the correct information and provide it to the Police when they make a report or to their insurance company.
As this website is extended and becomes widely used, it is expected to significantly disrupt the trade in stolen property. Mr Boreham said the public would probably be concerned at the amount of stolen property that has to be returned to offenders because something as simple as a serial number wasn't available to trace the legitimate owners of items such as televisions.
"And they would probably be more surprised to learn that the large screen plasma screen T.V. they've saved for is worth as little as 1gm of methamphetamine to a burglar.
It's not just about burglary. It's that well known electronics are an accepted form of currency in the drugs trade and by recording your valuables on SNAP you can prevent your items being transferred from the black market to the white and the offenders making money from the transaction."
Greg Magness, Director at Datacom said Datacom are proud to support an initiative that helps reduce crime in the community. The website is easy to use and means people can access their important information from anywhere at any time. No one can access the information other than you - your list of property is unique and only accessible with your igovt logon.
The SNAP concept has been in gestation for several years now and the Waikato is the lead District for Phase One. The next phase will integrate second hand dealers with the ability to automatically check a SNAP ‘stolen goods’ register to see if property has been lost or stolen. SNAP is supported by key partners such as Cash Converters, ASB Bank, Crimestoppers, SelectDNA and Trade Me. “Over time, more information will be added to the website such as advice on how to locate a serial number on items and how to personally mark property”, say Mr Magness.
The website uses the igovt Logon Service, which allows the public to use the same log on credentials to access online services provided by any participating government service provider. Datacom built and host this Logon Service for the Department of Internal Affairs.
A key feature of the SNAP website is its use of Datacom’s newest software product, the Identity Integrator (or ‘I2’), which assists in the integration with the igovt domain (for logon and identity verification services). The SNAP website marks the launch of Datacom’s I2 product, and provides an excellent example of Datacom’s hosted infrastructure cloud services in use.