Making an impact on the frontline: engaging with the Home Office’s research

My name is Katrina and I’m a chemistry PhD student seconded to the Home Office through the UKRI policy internship scheme. I’ve had an incredible time working here, and in particular I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing the impactful work being done in the Department. I wanted to share with academic networks the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Strategy and how academics can engage effectively with the Home Office’s research interests. I appreciate from my own experiences how this can be challenging – the Home Office is a large organisation with many responsibilities – so we’d like to improve knowledge of how to access us.

The Home Office play a vital role in protecting the public, from our streets to our borders. As threats emerge, we must adapt to understand and research these threats to be best equipped with the knowledge and tools to keep our nation safe.

The priorities of the Home Office are grouped into three missions:

• Public Safety (including Safer Streets)
• Migration and Borders
• Homeland Security

These missions encompass priorities ranging from the reduction of knife crime and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), tracking and reducing small boat crossings, enhancing operations at the border and countering the threat posed by new technologies such as drones. In the new age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), our approaches are adapting to use expertise in AI to both embed it in our solutions and understand the threats of AI-enabled crime.

Research, Development and Innovation Strategy

In March 2025, the Home Office Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Strategy was published. The strategy sets out our ambitions when it comes to driving the use of RDI to address the Home Office’s most complex challenges. RDI is fundamental to supporting the Home Office’s missions by developing new technologies, improving operational efficiency, and supporting decision-making on policy.

Our vision is for research, development and innovation to be central in the Home Office’s efforts to deliver a safer, fairer and more prosperous UK.

As part of our commitment for better implementation of RDI into the Home Office, incorporated into the strategy are clear actions and plans for better monitoring and evaluation to support funding and assess progress. This is something I’ve been working on in my time here, specifically developing an improved approach for quantitatively evaluating the impact of RDI before, during and after project delivery. In doing so I was fortunate to present this new approach to the team, answer questions, and take on feedback that is currently shaping some ongoing projects that we are piloting this evaluative approach on.

The strategy also highlights case studies that importantly demonstrates some of our successful RDI outcomes. Some of our recent achievements include:

• Record high number of drug seizures by Border Force, aided by the use of multiple technologies.
• Live Facial Recognition technology deployed to several forces to target and arrest high-harm criminals and suspects.
• Significant cost and time savings through implementation of AI-enabled technologies to tackle grooming gangs.
• Reduction in knife-enabled robberies driven by tactics such as drones, knife arches and detection dogs.

Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)

We are currently finalising the development of our updated Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) to improve transparency of our research aims to stakeholders and encourage external engagement. Our ARIs will outline key areas of RDI investment and opportunities for collaboration on projects to address our most pressing challenges. We hope to publish these soon, but for now our current ARIs can be viewed on gov.uk.

Engagement

As part of the new RDI strategy, we want to deepen our collaboration with various stakeholders, including academia. This will allow us to build a shared sense of purpose and ensuring science and innovation are at the heart of policy and operational delivery by utilising the best talent in the UK and internationally.

Our engagement plan aims to strengthen collaboration, diversify our suppliers, and embed science and innovation into policy and operational delivery by identifying and prioritising under-engaged but high-potential stakeholders across academia, industry, and government.

Strategic engagement is something I’ve also been working on in my time here with a particular focus on academic engagement by utilising my experience in and knowledge of academia. Our universities are host to unique expertise, capabilities and research environments which foster innovative work to protect the UK public. To engage better with universities, we are:

• Identifying a range of universities working on our research interests to seek advice and evidence.
• Keen to understand more on “what is possible” research.
• Using this to allow us to continue to be evidence-led in our solutions and develop science and technology capabilities.
• Wanting to support efficient research by seeking joint funding opportunities such as through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to allow for mutually beneficial, tangible research outcomes.

We strongly encourage academics working in areas aligned to the Home Office to read through the RDI strategy to understand how we will shape our research over the coming years and opportunities for collaboration. By supporting government missions, we hope this will lead to high impact research that can benefit and protect us all.

From a personal perspective, I also encourage those in academia to consider internships or fellowships to embed themselves into government. As someone doing research in science, I didn’t believe this opportunity was for someone like me at first. I’ve quickly realised how valued it is to bring academic knowledge and scientific thinking to civil service and this is continually being strengthened by the development of the Government Science & Engineering (GSE) profession. It’s been amazing to see how colleagues apply science, research and technology insights into their work and made me think differently about my research. This incredibly positive experience has opened so many doors for me and allowed me to deliver impact and influence in a short space of time. I’m very grateful to the wonderful team who have supported me throughout the internship and wish them every success in the continued delivery of their crucial RDI.