Police reorganisation plans will affect IT systems

The abolition of Soca and the NPIA to make way for a new policing body, the National Crime Agency, has caused waves in the forces but what does it say about the Home Office’s approach to IT and policing?

On the strength of a white paper, entitled Policing in the 21st Century: reconnecting police and the people, the Home Office appears to have a two-pronged approach.

The establishment of the National Crime Agency puts emphasis on better data co-ordination and centralisation leading to enhanced policing on a national level.

However, on a local level, the government has said it wants to focus on “accountability and not technology,” which will see it leave the rollout of specific technology to the police forces themselves.

Centralised IT tools
But it seems that many at the more senior level in the police say the government’s moves are misguided and argue that the abolition of Soca and NPIA will create problems around information management, because it will mean further transfer of systems and loss of staff knowledge.

Philip Webb, former chief of the Police IT Association, which was also disbanded, and current chair of the BCS government relations group, said the abolition of the NPIA and Soca has meant “things are pretty much in turmoil”.

“There is a lot of IT expertise within police forces but there is a lack of co-ordination and this [disbanding of central bodies] compounds the issue,” he said.

However, he said there had been many moves towards greater co-ordination over the past 10 years, with initiatives such as the national radio system, fingerprint system and the DNA database being rolled out.

The market is also rising to the challenge of providing services that can be used to co-ordinate information, with a shared services platform from Steria being taken up by Cleveland police force. It allows forces to share services such as payroll, commissioning and fleet management and could be rolled out to all 53 UK police forces.

The uptake of technology at local level has tended to be slow. One reason cited has been a reluctance to change from the average police officer. The Home Office report showed that seven police forces have opted not to arm officers with any sort of mobile device. However, Mark Cleverley, director of strategy at IBM’s Global Government Industry division, insists that officers’ use of IT is not a huge stumbling block for introducing more advanced technology.

“You have to look at the roles people play across the spectrum. Your ordinary copper is probably not going to become an expert on how to use IBM software or any sort of analytical software. But then that’s not their job,” he said.

He added that instead, they will use technology that enables them to provide data more efficiently. This information can be analysed and lead to better decision making.

“It enables enlightened decisions about resourcing, pre-placement of assets, shift patterns – the kind of decisions that are made all the time, but hopefully they will be better informed by the fact-based insight that comes out of these systems,” he said.

BCS’s Webb argues that IT implementations in local police forces tend to be good because they follow the model of the military and provide tools to officers that are easy to use. He added that the way to get police officers using new technology is by including them in the consultation.

“You have to introduce technology to police officers in a way that makes them feel part of it. They need to see the benefits of the technology,” he said.

Technology implementation

IBM is attempting to appeal to UK police forces with its predictive analytics tools, which enable them to anticipate crime hot spots by inputting historical information about crime.

In the US, the Memphis Police Department (MPD) has used IBM’s predictive analytics software for its own Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History system, and can now evaluate patterns and forecast criminal activity to proactively allocate resources and deploy personnel.

The MPD says the system has helped to reduce serious crime by more than 30 per cent, including a 15 per cent reduction in violent crimes since 2006. Now, two unnamed UK police forces are using IBM’s technology in an effort to make a similar impact on crime in their areas.