Police going mobile with handheld computers

Police are using PDAs

Almost half of frontline police officers now have access to a mobile personal data assistant, according to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), and the devices are proving popular with the lion's share of officers.

Last year, the Home Office allocated £80m over the next three years to the project, widely recommended by top police officers as a way of cutting bureaucracy and time spent in the station.

In fact the NPIA discovered, following a survey of the Bedfordshire police force, that the amount of time officers spent in the office was reduced from 46 per cent before the introduction of the devices to 36 per cent afterwards. The devices cost the force £270 per year each.

Other benefits cited by the NPIA include the fact that devices give officers on-the-spot access to vital information as well as allowing them to file reports directly from incidents rather than returning to the stations.

Although the technology has been relatively easy to roll out, cultural change has been the main obstacle to the scheme, according to inspector Jim Hitch of Bedfordshire police, speaking at a roundtable organised by BlackBerry.

"You're asking people to do their day-to-day job on a PDA – it’s a big change for some people," he said.

The experience of Bedfordshire and other forces has been that about 80-85 per cent of devices that have been rolled out are actively being used.

Inevitably some of those slow to take up the devices have been older officers, Hitch said.

"We've examined usage and are targeting the hearts and minds of those who aren't using them rather than using the stick approach."

The processes that the PDA was meant to help can still be circumnavigated by many officers determined to do things the old way – this can potentially be dangerous.

Whereas PDA channels are secure, officers circumnavigating may use texts, phone calls or even bits of paper to record information that could be lost later, meaning information could become more insecure.

Gary Cairns, mobile information programme manager for the National Policing Improvement Agency – which co-ordinates police technology - said the programme had been so successful that they are considering using them to replace police radios.

"When Airwave [the police radio network] expires in 2015, we are looking at whether we can have just one device," he said.

Thames Valley Police have found that Airwave traffic has stayed the same since the introduction of the devices because the police radios were overloaded, according to Keith Gough, Thames Valley Police mobile information manager.

"Introducing the device has released a pent-up need for more checks on the police national computer, which can be done on both devices – previously the Airwave channels were often busy," he said.

“Police national computer checks over police Airwave radios take an average of three minutes and involve two members of staff, while those on mobile devices use only one officer and are faster,” Gough said.

Asked whether a Conservative government would continue investment in handheld devices, Tory MP David Davies, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "With upcoming cuts needed in public spending, if anyone can make a business case showing it can save money then obviously it will be looked at."