New Technologies and Collaboration

The recent Policing Green Paper highlighted the role that new technologies and collaboration can play in enabling police officers to streamline operations and exchange accurate and timely information more effectively with their regional peers.

Some forces have invested in mobile devices to minimize the need for officers to spend time on administrative duties, so that they can focus on frontline policing and serving the public. The ability to shift resources quickly from one place to the next, depending on where support is required, is crucial. All forces can introduce robust mobile working practices to ensure a sufficient police presence on the streets and that any issues can be dealt with as soon as possible.

Forces across the UK face many of the same strategic, operational and technology challenges as private sector organisations. However, they often have much tighter budgets and fewer internal resources to invest in the implementation of new technologies.

Challenges

While mobile devices and other new technologies can deliver many benefits for officers, it is worth bearing in mind that any technology roll-out can pose its own challenges for forces with already limited resources.

Many forces have highlighted the need to upgrade their communications, intelligence and other IT systems. Yet, it is easy to overlook the effort that is required to ensure that officers and support staff are appropriately trained to use the new technologies.

In addition to minimizing administrative duties through the use of new technology, forces can exploit even further collaborative working as a means to improve service delivery. Collaborative working refers to practices whereby several forces share resources and data to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Through intelligence sharing and enhanced cross-force communications, for example, forces are in a stronger position to tackle crime while eradicating duplication of efforts. Yet new collaborative working practices often call for huge changes in the way forces operate. So, how can forces across the UK make the most of collaboration?

Benefits

According to the Green Paper, protective services is one of the key areas where collaborative working practices could deliver great benefits.

As criminals mastermind more sophisticated and complex operations, sharing intelligence between forces is increasingly important in bringing suspects to account.

Regional intelligence units, where not only the police force but also law enforcement agencies can analyze and store information about serious organized crimes, have been set up across the nation to make intelligence more accessible.

Collaboration is beneficial not just for sharing intelligence but across a range of essential policing activities. Forces are finding it particularly useful for the delivery of essential police officer training.

By working together, they are able to reduce the costs of training, reduce differences in working methods and improve cross-force relations. This helps officers work better together in further collaborative projects and reduce training times when officers are required to transfer between forces.

Further collaborative advantages are found with administrative operations, such as the procurement of goods and services, human resources, fleet management and relations with the professional standards departments.

Initiatives

There are several collaboration initiatives that are already proving successful nationwide. These include joint major crime initiatives, traffic policing partnerships and joint scientific services facilities. These projects all have the same goal – improving service delivery while cutting costs.

One region that has benefited from collaboration is the South West of England. There, five forces have embarked on a ground-breaking project that enables them to share information, as well as minimize cumbersome paperwork and unnecessary hold-ups.

Since July 2007, information relating to protective services delivery and finance projects, for example, is readily available and accessible for officers across the forces within the South West.

There are beacons of best practice in other parts of the UK too. All collaborating forces know that time and structured management is of the essence to ensure the shift to collaboration is successful. It has been said that the autonomy and sovereignty of each force must be encompassed in the governance arrangement of each project.

Decisions to enter into any collaborative arrangement must have the agreement of both the chief constable and the police authority and the project must be carefully managed at all levels.

There must also be the option to exit or modify the project on all sides if it does not produce the desired outcomes.

In order to succeed, collaborative working practices need to be implemented strategically, from the top down. Without linking the Government’s strategy with tactics to be implemented on the ground, it is unlikely that collaborative initiatives will deliver real benefits for forces in the long-term.

The scale of any change grows as it moves further down the line – in other words, what is a strategic shift for the Government and those at the top of the force is almost a complete change of life for the officer on the beat. Officers may be discouraged by the changes in their working methods which, as with any new task, will take some time for them to become familiar with. This may result in a failure to truly transform working practices with police officers falling back on old, less efficient methods, unless they have been fully educated about the benefits of the new ones. This would then jeopardize the success of any collaboration project.

Leadership

The Government is endorsing collaboration and the adoption of new technologies, but any changes to working practices will be challenging for forces.

Major operational changes require strong leadership and investment of time, resources and cash to do them justice. Forces can adopt a holistic and strategic top-down approach to make the most of technology and collaboration projects. Those that invest in them wholeheartedly, with backing from the ranks, will reap the rewards and most importantly, pass on those benefits to the general public.

David Hughes is practice director at management consultancy ABeam Consulting.