EU Law Enforcement Training Needs on Digital Skills and the Use of New Technologies

Abstract

Digitalisation, one of the key elements addressed by CEPOL in law enforcement training, is carried out based on the continuing and emerging technological innovations that needs to be given the highest priority across the European law enforcement community. The new European Union Strategic Needs Assessment (EU-STNA), defines the strategic EU-level training priorities of law enforcement officials for the next 4-year cycle, 2022-2025, in line with the EMPACT priorities, emphasizing the importance of digital skills and use of new technologies, as one of the main horizontal aspects that should be addressed in all training activities. Cyber-attacks, had the highest prioritising, as EU training need, within the Member States, indicating more than 7600 officials that would need to be trained. Law enforcement and judiciary authorities would need further awareness raising regarding cyber security, cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crime, but also further improvement in dealing with e-evidence and international cooperation mechanisms. Taking into consideration the deliverables of the EU-STNA process, CEPOL has further launched a structured training needs analysis in 2021, the OTNA on Digital skills and the use of new technologies, in order to define the training portfolio addressing digitalisation of law enforcement for 2023-2025. Amongst most relevant training topics of the responding countries, we can highlight the Digital investigations, use of new technologies and digital forensics, that would need to be included in law enforcement training activities.