Point of View

“The Drive to Modernise”How Technology is Moving the Police Forward

Despite the rapid development and increased use of IT across

business, many police forces around the world are still working with

outdated manual processes. In some countries, policing can be

predominantly paper-driven, resulting in time-consuming and error

prone administrative processes.

Many forces have historically developed data silos resulting in a lack of

integration of internal systems and across different forces at a national

and international level. Equally, poor data quality can result in inac-

curate or outdated information potentially being used to influence po-

lice operations. The ability to conduct extensive ‘deep’ data searches

is non-existent in many countries. This limits forces’ effectiveness to

deploy high-quality analytics to available data.

These issues are incentivising police forces to modernise their ap-

proach. Indeed, modern IT systems are increasingly being seen as a

potential replacement for current processes and practices. In some

countries, particularly in advanced Western economies, budget cuts

have led to an especially strong drive to modernisation. The global

downturn has resulted in a government-driven squeeze on spending.

This has, in turn, forced police and other law enforcement agencies

to re-assess their current policing models and focus on alternative

methods to drive efficiencies in the way they operate.

In India, for example, we are beginning to see the government pre-

pared to invest in Police modernisation. In Eastern Europe, countries

like Moldova, are making moves towards modernising law enforce-

ment systems and processes.

Technology - Helping Modernise the Police Approach Technology can play a key role in driving this modernisation process. It

can, for example, help minimise the time taken by police for reporting,

investigating crime and streamline the process across the criminal

justice system to prosecute offenders. However, it is also all about

rapid information sharing - moving away from just storing material for

the sake of it into sharing that material with those that need to know –

and undertaking complex data analysis on it.

Technology helps streamline internal police processes and substantially

reduces bureaucracy into the bargain. Also, all modern police forces

have to be transparent. They all have to produce statistics about what

they are doing, why they are doing it, how they are doing it, etc. - in

order to be measured on those. In this context, technology helps

provide key information as and when required about outcomes as well

as enabling users to make assessments of levels of performance that

would not previously have been possible.

Forces also need to ensure not only that they are tracking the latest

modern technological trends but also that they are assimilating those

elements of modern technology that are vital to supporting their

overall objectives. The key is to strike a balance between systems and

solutions, helping forces to carry out tasks more quickly and efficiently,

whilst at the same time allowing officers to continue to use their own

intuition and carry on applying basic policing skills.

Driving a Preventative Approach While prevention and detection are both critically important to police

forces, modern technology is particularly helping to address the grow-

ing focus on crime prevention.

Technology helps police to quickly assess their data and work out

where best to apply resources on a particular day or at a particular

place, for example; identifying ‘hot spots’. Target hardening is also help-

ing to support a more preventative approach. Increasingly, we are see-

ing manufacturers developing products which make crime harder to

commit – number plates that disintegrate when criminals try to remove

them from cars, for example, reinforced double glazing, extra lighting

for dark alleyways, etc.

In some countries, the Philippines, for example, target hardening is

even being used by police to combat terrorism.

Culture and Change Management Forces are no longer reluctant to embrace change. The days where

the attitude and tradition would be – this is how we have always done

it - are largely gone. We are seeing some police forces adopting a more

digital, electronic approach to what they do – in some countries this is

government-driven, in others less so.

In some parts of the world, this is primarily an issue of working practice,

in others, it is having a more profound impact in changing the culture of

the police and the way it works. How much police forces are prepared

to modernise and the pace with which they do it varies from country to

country and from force to force.

Modernisation is happening within police forces the world over but

sometimes the pace of change can be slow and sometimes it is misdi-

rected. Officers from forces around the world are eager to start using

electronic gadgets, for example. Unfortunately they often end up using

their own devices, either because they are more modern than those

issued by the force, or because they have not been issued with anything

at all.

We are also seeing more partnering happening both within countries

and cross-border but again it is often happening too slowly or is con-

fined to sharing resources.

The 1984-5 miners’ strike in the UK was an early example of collabo-

ration between forces in a single country. We now see international

mutual aid for major disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, for

example, while the Madeleine McCann investigation in Portugal dem-

onstrates how the principle of cross-border international cooperation

can be used in a criminal investigation.

So, although modernisation is happening there is clearly a need for a

driver to speed things up and that’s where training and consultancy can

help. There are many examples of police forces internationally that have

tried to set up their own project management teams.

The issue they often face is: have they got the right skills to deliver this?

Has the project team got the right skills or is it made up of individuals

because of their rank and grade? Governments across the world are

putting pressure on forces to improve the service they are offering

while at the same time driving them to make greater financial savings;

This is outside the capability of most forces. Instead, they need to start

looking at partnering with innovation and integration partners who can

deliver expert teams focused on achieving these core goals.

Training is key not just in getting officers up and running on the technol-

ogy but also critically in ensuring they understand the importance and

benefits of modernisation both to themselves as individuals and their

organisation. It is often a case of winning hearts and minds – particularly

when dealing with middle aged or older officers who are typically less

comfortable or familiar with modern technology than their younger

colleagues.

Conclusion – How Important is Integration? Forces across the world are increasingly implementing new technol-

ogy in a bid to achieve a modernised approach to policing. For many,

implementing end-to-end systems is a clear final target. Police need to

identify and understand threats, risks, harm to individuals or property

and ensure there is a proportionate and effective response.

To do so, they need to be able to see the complete picture end-to-end

and have the requisite systems and solutions in place to address it. One

vendor working in isolation will typically not be in position to provide

a fully end-to-end solution, so innovation and skilled project manage-

ment are key in delivering a coordinated response.

Systems, even if they are from multiple vendors, must be fully integrat-

ed, if the approach is to work, and a single contract for servicing and

maintenance of all IT deployments is vital if costs are to be kept down.

Only by bringing such an approach together with high-performance

technology that meets the challenges forces are facing today, can the

drive to modernisation be successfully achieved.

West Midlands Police

The UK’s second-largest Police force has a clientele that isn’t always

forthcoming with accurate information. If suspects provide fake

names or false dates of birth, those inaccuracies got fed into a

system that already faces common errors such as typos or missing

information. Officers were spending hours trying to run searches

and piece together information that might pinpoint trends or help

them make decisions – such as where suspects might be located,

or whether those suspects had the potential to be a serious threat.

The solution:

SAS technology was deployed to clean, match and aggregate re-

cords, providing immediate benefits. The matching was so success-

ful, that 14 million individual records from 13 different systems were

aggregated into 4 million nominal records, providng a much more

accurate, complete view of the people in its database. It is now

easier – and faster – for officers to complete database searches,

resulting in Officers spending less time in the office and more time

policing the streets.

The systems also helps manage the shelf-life of database records,

ensuring the agency keeps criminal records for a set number of

years. Officers are now prompted before a record is due for dele-

tion, giving them the option of extending the shelf-life if a policing

purpose exists.

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