Criminal Justice Management

A Mobile Force

The quest to get police constables away from desks and onto the street is an ongoing concern. The public want the police released from red tape and from their offices, and mobile technology could be a useful way to ensure that happens. However, another major public concern is that of information security; a number of high-profile data loss incidents have left many people nervous of confidential records being carried outside of offices. Richard Earland, chief information officer (CIO) at the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), has confidence in the benefits of mobile technology to the police force and the communities they serve, and he is convinced such gadgets will not place the public at risk.

Earland is adamant mobile technology will help the operational officer carry out necessary admin in the shortest time possible. Earland cites Sir Ronnie Flanagan, whose review of policing was published last year, in identifying ‘bad’ and ‘good’ bureaucracy. “There’s good bureaucracy that’s necessary for control and systems and processes to do with how you use firearms and the like. And there’s bad bureaucracy: the filling in of forms, the going back to a station to fill things in, and even the sacred area of the officer’s notebook where everything is written down and then officers go back and transcribe that onto multiple IT systems.

“So a very important early part of this strategy is to roll out mobile devices so that officers don’t have to return to the stations; the information can be captured once and used many times, and so that information that’s available for operational decision making can be got to officers quickly.”

What would be the training implications of rolling out this technology across the forces? Earland does not anticipate there would be many issues among a workforce where many have now grown up using complex gadgets. He explains: “The frontline patrolling officer is typically quite young in the service and belongs to a generation that has grown up with technology from a very early age. These officers take to mobile computing like ducks to water. They want it. They use very sophisticated third and fourth generation mobile phones in their private lives and they expect us to provide tools of that type to them.

“There’s no doubt, there are some big cultural
issues and the biggest issue is for me to change business process; the underlying way in which officers operate in order to really drive the benefits out of the technology. I don’t think it’s a question that officers have been around a long time and this is all new. Actually, there are a lot of very young officers out there and they are looking for this technology. The challenge is to change the underlying business process so that there’s real benefit there.”

When it comes to security, the CIO is cautiously confident. “The first thing I’d say is that frontline police officers are good at protecting things; they tend not to be careless with documents and information, generally. I know that’s a sweeping statement but I think it’s the case. Secondly, mobile devices are designed and built with information assurance in mind from the outset. If necessary, a mobile device can be remotely switched off and wiped. And in any event, we only store the absolute minimum amount of information on the device for the minimum amount of time so that the risk is understood and managed.”

These devices could even be safer than many other existing options. Earland states: “I think they are less of a risk because we only use them for specific purposes, holding very small amounts of personal data for short periods and most of that information is sent straight from the device wirelessly to a secure environment rather than being stored locally. I think they represent less of a risk than laptops or memory sticks, for example.”

In addition to cutting time wasted at desks, Earland believes ICT will drive up business practice standards within the police. He explains: “Historically, the police service has considered information technology in two different areas: the area of national systems and, completely separately, 43 police forces have thought about their local systems environment. I’m using the term systems here to mean the business process, the flow of information and the underlying technology that supports that. What is different now is that we’re taking a view of the total information environment in policing and saying ‘is there a better way of working collaboratively to drive down cost, drive up interoperability and join things up but for a purpose?’.

“The purpose is to do three things. One is to improve the citizen experience of policing and the criminal justice system. The second is to improve the working environment for operational staff. The third, responding to the challenges of the fiscal climate, is to do this more cost effectively than in the past. And that’s really the big idea; the big idea to break the mindset that says one bunch of people do national systems and another bunch of people do local systems. And you’ve got lots of people trying to make it work at a local level. We’re now saying ‘let’s take a big systems view of this’.”

Following the Policing Green Paper, the Information Systems Improvement Strategy (Isis) programme was launched, jointly led by Earland and Chief Constable Sean Price, who represents the Association of Chief Police Officers. Earland notes: “I now believe that most chief constables, chairs of police authorities and IT directors in this country support the principal of a strategy to converge police IT. The real emphasis has been winning the commitment of the police service to be part of this; so, moving away from ‘what can Isis do for policing?’, to police forces saying ‘what can I do locally to support the Isis principal?’ – because the principal is signed up to.

“If we go back to the current fiscal climate, Isis represents an opportunity to do what needs to be done in the IT arena at significantly less cost than the old way of doing it. Therefore people want to be part of that because there are some big financial challenges at force level. What we’re now working on is the difference between a strategy and a plan; the strategy is well understood and we’re working out which parts of the plan get delivered, by whom and in what sequence. We’re working with individual forces and with regions. I’m mobilising a significant team to be able to do that. It’s worth noting that as part of that team I have just recruited an Executive Chief Constable for Isis and that’s a sign that we’re putting very senior operational people right at the top of this programme to ensure that it’s grounded in the operational requirement, rather than just a bunch of tin and string.”

Earland is happy with the progress made since the government commissioned the NPIA to conduct the report, saying: “I think we’ve made phenomenal progress. One could always look for more to be done more quickly but the key to this whole range of things we’re doing is we’re here to work with the police service. Working with the police service means we need to engage with people. Engagement – if it’s not just lip service – takes time. What I’ve spent a lot of the last year in the Isis territory doing is listening very carefully. Some of the things we’ve proposed have not been liked. They’ve asked us to take more account of what forces are doing in terms of regional collaboration and we’ve changed our approach to take account of that. That’s time consuming. However, a bit of time spent up front, listening carefully and working with people will make this much more sustainable and much more likely to deliver long-term benefit, because to see the strategy out to 2015, it’s not a quick fix and I’m very satisfied with the progress we’ve made.

“The most important thing to remember about Isis is that one year ago I was explaining why it was necessary. Today, all the debate is on how we do it. To do that across the complexity of the criminal justice and police service with some of the traditional, cultural paradigms that exist in a year is pretty reasonable.”

Richard Earland, director of information, communications, technology and science at the National Policing Improvement Agency, spoke to CJM