Over 90% of crimes involve a digital trail, yet the UK's 43 police forces each hold their data in separate, incompatible systems. Elastic just laid out a decentralized prescription for that boundary problem. Title: Making Data Work Across Boundaries: The Next Challenge for Policing URL: 🧩 The data mesh idea Instead of centralizing everything into one platform, each force runs its own Elastic instance under local governance, connected only through common, open interfaces, making information available to those who need it without making everything available to everyone. 📈 Concrete efficiency numbers Pre-preparing context cut input processing by 58% and response time by 40%. Agent steps dropped from 33 to 9, and response time fell from 213 seconds to 64 seconds. ⚖️ Three principles shaped by past failures Separate the data foundation from applications, make openness the default, and centralize only when operationally justified. These lessons echo past large-scale failures like the NHS National Programme (£9.8 billion lost) and FiReControl's shutdown (£469 million lost). Connecting data across organizational boundaries without centralizing it feels like a pattern that could extend well beyond policing to many public-sector systems. #DataMesh# #Elastic#