Tackling modern slavery through digital collaboration

Whilst out of the spotlight, the government's law enforcement agenda continues unabated and under reported, despite national media focus being squarely on Covid, the vaccine rollout, or Brexit. 

The there is still urgent and important work being done to combat labour exploitation and modern slavery. Central to this is the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority [GLAA] which has been working to improve case work quality and efficiency, with an eye to automation and improved partner working. The exploitation of transient workers and the identification of modern slavery is a major challenge overseen by the GLAA, and so this digital work is truly transformative for its staff. 

Joined up working

This opportunity for a more joined up way of working has been identified as part of the UK Labour Market Enforcement Strategy, with a recommendation to “develop strategies to target and improve the awareness of employment rights, particularly for vulnerable, at-risk and hard-to-reach communities.” 

With recognition that enforcement activity cannot rely on responding to worker complaints alone and a shift to more proactive enforcement is an effective approach in uncovering violations, which also has a substantial deterrent effect.

One way to develop this proactive approach is through better intelligence sharing to inform the bodies’ risk-modelling processes and, ultimately, their targeted enforcement.

There has never been a better time to evaluate opportunities to engage further in joint working with wider partners to identify where intelligence and operational resources can best be utilised with particular focus on tackling recidivism and deliberate non-compliance.

There is a good appetite for wider working, but technology can make or break this initiative. Smooth interactions, with good compliance and audit trails to ensure quality as the working practices evolve, ensuring sufficient checks and balances and core improvement areas and delivery.

We can see that it is now recognised that there is a huge potential to improve the coordination of a multi-agency response to the challenges we face. Central to this is data sharing and connected case management - especially important in the face of increasing evidence of exploitation and links to serious, organised criminal gangs.

Moving toward the cloud

Building on the principals of the government’s ‘cloud-first’ policy, the GLAA uses an Arcus developed licensing solution underpinned by the Salesforce ecosystem, which matches up with the ‘Single Online Home’, a ‘Common Police Online presence’ public reporting into Policing systems and processes.

In the near future, risk markers could be shared to help direct investigators to respond more quickly to cases of exploitation and criminality.

There is a saying: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen”. Perhaps this drip drip drip of marginal gains toward a cloud-enabled present is close to a tipping point in tackling worker exploitation and modern slavery identification. I for one hope so. This form of crime is one of the most pernicious, and we’re reminded so regularly of this through news stories of the people caught up in it. Improved technology and data sharing, whilst a superficially dry subject outside of the technology community, holds the promise of reducing this form of criminality.

Improving data to improve lives

The public are often in contact with trafficked people, in nail bars, car washes and other businesses nobody would suspect. Through digitally enabled intelligence reporting, investigations will improve, but to allow this the underpinning technology needs to be simple to use and robust to scale. By making it easier to report suspicions, along with increasing public awareness, again through digital means, this will be game-changing.

We are working every day at Arcus Global to help realise this vision. We must improve data exploitation and support the services that help improve peoples’ situations, working hand in glove, in partnership to deliver services that make lives better, with pace and passion.