Mergers failing and an approach to technology that’s an “utter mess”: How can technology help a police force that is struggling to cope? writes Simon Hall, CEO and co-founder, Coeus Software, pictured.
In early October it was announced that the much-lauded alliance between West Mercia and Warwickshire Police forces is coming to an end, just four years after it was announced. Under the agreement, like many forces working in collaboration, West Mercia and Warwickshire shared IT, human resources and corporate communications, as well as elements of command and operational resources, such as dogs, major enquiry teams and firearms units. With the merger coming to an end, West Mercia and Warwickshire forces will need to find an alternative way to make efficiency savings. Faced with years of austerity, many police forces have looked at mergers in an effort to share resources and improve efficiencies, but in light of recent breaks like this one questions are being asked about the viability of the model.
Though spokespeople for West Mercia Police have commented that the move is part of an effort to provide the public with better value for money, Warwickshire Police have said that the alliance had saved more than £35m since it came into force.
On the heels of news from a Home Affairs Select Committee revealing that police forces are “struggling to cope” amid falling numbers and rising crime, the question of what forces can do to alleviate strain on their teams and make the most use of their resources is a prevalent one. Shared IT resources are a key part of many police force mergers, and the Home Affairs Select Committee called the UK Police Force’s investment in and adoption of new technology a “complete and utter mess”. But if mergers aren’t the answer to more successfully utilising the technology available, then what is?
Using the cloud
One of the biggest technology challenges facing the police is the disjointed nature of the programmes and processes used to collect the data they need, both within their organisation and when dealing with external processes – the police, courts, probation services, social services all use different systems. At a practical level, I hear every day from officers who are exasperated by the sheer quantity of different databases and systems they need just to complete the simplest of tasks, such as searching intelligence and criminal records and then having to assimilate the information quickly, all with different login details.
Simplifying police IT should be a priority for the Home Office, making the merger model unnecessary and providing solid leadership in the adoption of new technology, however until this thinking is put into practice there are steps forces can take for their own IT to mitigate the problem.
Police forces like West Mercia and Warwickshire can continue to leverage many of the efficiency benefits of a merger by simply using cloud-based IT, such as Microsoft Azure hosted services or mobile apps. With IT accounting for a sizeable proportion of a police force’s operational expenditure, using cloud services to make meaningful savings makes a lot of sense.
PoliceBox is just one example of a cloud-based service which can be deployed quickly to deliver cost-savings to a force, specifically designed to combat the disjointed IT challenge. Via a single app on their smartphone, it allows Officers to get paperwork done, digitally, while in or out of the office. Most importantly for officers, it provides a means by which disparate systems can be researched on a federated basis, providing the potential for an officer to see all of the known facts about a person, object, location or event and therefore make an informed decision more quickly.
We all know police officers have enough on their plate without having to process mountains of paperwork at the end of every shift. But this is the reality of their workday. Simply taking a witness statement or issuing a ticket for a driving offence means more time sat at their desk when they could be out on patrol or following up an investigation. While the public sector as a whole has been encouraged to go “cloud-first” and “digital-by-default” since 2012, many police forces are still largely paper-based. They have a lot to gain from digitisation. To quote just one example, Avon and Somerset Constabulary calculated it could save £323,943 per year in back office costs just from rolling out digital statements to its officers. That is just one process in one force going digital. Imagine what could be achieved nationwide. By simply swapping inefficient paperwork processes for purely digital ones, police forces across the country have the opportunity to uncover efficiency savings that will dwarf those gained from mergers.
