PDAs on the beat cut police admin time

Lothian and Borders Police force is replacing traditional paper notebooks with PDAs to reduce administrative tasks.

The force is training 250 officers to use the devices to take handwritten notes on crimes and vehicle accidents.

Inspector Norman Dixon, the mobile data projects manager for Lothian and Borders Police, says until now officers who take notes when they are out on the beat have had to come back to the station and rekey or copy the information.

‘By recording that information electronically, they can simply plug the PDA back into a cradle when they get back to the station, download it, check it and amend it, and then press a button to send it on to the next person,’ said Dixon.

‘We have calculated that officers save 24 minutes per crime or accident.’

Lothian and Border’s road traffic officers report that the system already saves 45 minutes per day on back-office administration. The system can also be used to issue fixed penalty tickets at the roadside, cutting the time taken to transfer information from up to a week to just a few hours, says Dixon.

Scottish Executive’s Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson says the PDA system is a major development in using new technology to make policing more efficient.