New technology on the beat
Police will be armed with iPad-style technology to free up their administrative load, Premier Jay Weatherill announced today.
Addressing the 2013 Police Association Annual Delegates’ Conference, the Premier said the government would fund a $1.7 million pilot program giving every frontline officer in the Elizabeth Local Service Area their own iPad-style tablet.
“Simple tasks, such as travelling back to the station to perform administrative tasks, diminish the real time that you spend actually reducing crime,” Weatherill said.
“We need to redesign whole systems and rethink the way that we do things.
“We want you on the frontline, where we can truly make a difference.”
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Weatherill said if the trial was successful it would be part of a longer term mobility strategy including rationalisation of desktop computers in stations and static in-vehicle Mobile Data Terminals (MDT’s).
“The sum of this computing technology is a suite of tools that better suits and meets the needs of an agile, responsive police service in a modern digital age.”
The SA announcement follows moves in New South Wales where an Australian-designed iPad application is being trialled to process infringement notices.
Website Delimiter reported last month the application, called ‘Mobile Notices’, is based on an idea proposed and developed by frontline NSW Police officers, and was designed and built by Australian-based mobile application developer, Gridstone.
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Gridstone says the app gives traffic and general duties officers the ability to perform secure, live look-ups of vehicle registration, licence and other information in NSW Police’s central Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS); automatically capture relevant geo-location data; attach photos if required; and enter additional information and notes about the incident.
All the data captured by the app is immediately transmitted back to COPS and also to the NSW State Debt Recovery Office (SDRO) systems for processing.
The officer can also use the app to inform the driver as to the number of points lost, the cumulative points they have incurred and the total cost of the fine for the infringement.
An infringement notice is created as a PDF document, and the driver can request for it to be electronically sent via email or MMS, or delivered via post.
The email or MMS notice is sent to the driver as soon as requested via the app, and the request to post is immediately processed and managed through the SDRO.
Gridstone was engaged by NSW Police in early 2013 to begin work on the proof-of-concept.
Superintendent Karen McCarthy, who is managing the trial for NSW Police, said the expected savings from Mobile Notices was estimated at 240,000 police hours and $1.2 million per year.
The move to new technology follows problems experienced around Australia by police forces lumbered with old technology.
The Victorian Ombudsman reported in August that a 15-year-old IT system was one of the main contributors to the state losing more than $1.2 billion of revenue from millions of uncollected legal infringement fines.
