Project SeaCAT is already gaining recognition for its ability to reduce harm to children by addressing the volume and scope of child sexual offences, as recognised by winning the MCA Awards for ‘Change and Transformation in the Public Sector’ and ‘Project of the Year’. With many of the offences taking place online, the ability to track down offenders, materials and sites has typically been a reactive and distressing task for civil servants. SeaCAT’s three-pronged automated solution is reducing analyst exposure, while forming a more proactive defence against would-be offenders.
In 2022, there were more than 100,000 recorded offences of child sex abuse across England and Wales. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 webpages were identified as containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and the NSPCC estimates that as many as one in 20 children have been sexually abused.
Helping to tackle child sexual abuse materials online
His Majesty’s Government is focused on reducing the harm to children by addressing the volume and scope of child sexual offences. With much of them taking place online, the ability to track down offenders, materials and sites has typically been a reactive and distressing task for civil servants.
An incredible team of highly skilled and dedicated individuals, which includes several of our consultants, has been working with His Majesty’s Government on 'project SeaCAT' in the fight against CSAM online.
The project focuses on tackling the proliferation of CSAM while alleviating the working lives of those who – distressingly – analyse the content. The project includes a Data Upload Service Template (DUST) which removes human interaction from the accelerated process of assimilating more accurate data. A platform the team has created, referred to by the customer as Womble Ensemble, then automatically identifies and scans tens of thousands of indicative websites every day for CSAM for takedown. Finally, the Exposure Logging Tool (ELT) helps to measure civil servant welfare by closely monitoring their exposure to CSAM cases.
Raising the barrier to offending
The solutions implemented by our team of consultants have already considerably improved levels of data integration, speeding up the process of bringing together accurate information to cut down on the number of unrecorded offences while also enabling quicker actions to those that are sent for analysis. Automated scanning and identification capabilities mean that tens of thousands of websites for CSAM can be identified every day and – ultimately – taken down.
For those who have traditionally been tasked with analysing the troubling content, it also reduces the amount of exposure that civil servants have to such distressing sites. This distress has not only historically impacted retention levels, but – understandably – it has also effected the capacity to tackle this job after sustained periods of exposure. That’s why SeaCAT’s ELT is so vital, in being able to identify which tasks cause the most exposure so that mental wellbeing support can be applied accordingly.
Ultimately, SeatCAT will raise the barrier to offending. As the mission and rationale behind SeaCAT demonstrates, the need for automation spans both the worker and victim side of the equation. For the latter, being able to clamp down quickly and seamlessly has been seen to act as a deterrent from CSAM being created in the first place. As a result of this work, the project has seen:
- Nine months of analyst time saved in the first 18 months alone
- Time-critical dataset analysed within 24 hours
- Tens of thousands of websites automatically scanned daily for CSAM
*statistics above as reported by His Majesty's Government
SeaCAT’s mission
Analysing so much information, while keeping ahead of the game and trying to proactively prevent further offences, causes huge strain on civil servants. As a result of the workload, the distressing content and the reactive nature of their work, civil servants’ mental health can be negatively affected and often leads to temporary or permanent breaks. Even more worryingly, it’s anticipated that those 100,000-plus offences are just a fraction of the overall number of offences that occurred in 2022.
SeaCAT’s mission is to significantly reduce the harm to children online by placing automation and data at the heart of the process. The result being a quicker, more accurate, more proactive and more thorough analysis of the CSAM and child sex offence landscape, enabling more proactive actions from civil servants who will also have their exposure to harrowing content reduced significantly.
“We're thankful for everything the team did to enable this flow - it’s been a game changer for the mission team. Everyone’s hard work will tangibly support our work to find, assess and seek the removal of online child sexual abuse, making the internet a safer place and stopping the repeat victimisation survivors experience every time images and videos of their abuse are shared or traded online.”Project Lead, His Majesty’s Government
Project spotlight
SeaCAT’s impact has already been sizeable across its three core solution arms. DUST has so far saved nine months of analyst time, significantly reducing their CSAM exposure as a result. The mission team is now able to ingest and analyse new time-critical datasets within 24 hours, speeding up the process exponentially.
Womble Ensemble has ensured that tens of thousands of indicative websites are now automatically identified and scanned for CSAM every day. This would have previously required as many as 1,000 analysts to achieve the same volume manually.
ELT is already being used by three departments within His Majesty’s Government, enabling managers to see at a single glance what tasks are causing the most exposure. Not only is this aiding retention levels, but it is also improving the on-boarding process as we form a more coordinated and proactive barrier to child sex offences.