Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Police Force Increases Officer Visibility and Drives Efficiency with Smart Client Solution
Overview
Country or Region:United Kingdom
Industry:Public Sector
Customer Profile
Thames Valley Police covers a large area of central England. Its officers fulfill a variety of roles including beat, traffic, urban, and rural policing. It employs 4,000 officers in total.
Business Situation
The Police Service wanted a mobile solution that could link to the Police National Computer and provide officers with succinct, accurate data more quickly than using radio communications.
Solution
Working closely with Microsoft® and Lynx Technology, the force’s developers created a smart client application called Smart Beat, which runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile™devices.
Benefits
User involvement in development cycle ensures field relevance
Ability to work on or offline saves valuable time
Complies with high-level security requirements
Less station-based administration increases officer visibility
Easy to use solution facilitates 60 per cent more PNC checks / “Despite this only being a pilot with a limited number of users within the force, Smart Beat is already becoming an invaluable tool.”
Keith Gough, Project Manager, ThamesValley Police
Modern police forces have a swathe of information tools available, but they can rarely be accessed directly on the beat. To increase the time that its police officers spend on the beat, preventing and solving crime, rather than filling in station-based forms, Thames Valley Police is piloting a mobile system based on Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ 2003 software for Pocket PC. Currently being tested in the field by about 70 officers, the smart client application, called Smart Beat, is already delivering significant time savings to the force, with each user making an estimated 60 per cent more vehicle and person checks per week. Each check now takes less than 30 seconds, compared to the previous three minutes. Pilot team members are also able to spend, on average, 40 extra minutes per shift out on the street, reassuring the public by their presence, solving crime, and deterring would-be criminals.
Situation
Thames Valley Police is the largest non-metropolitan police force in the United Kingdom (U.K.). It has a duty to protect and serve its population of 2.1 million people in addition to the six million visitors the area receives each year.
Like any modern police force, IT is critical in helping Thames Valley Police to achieve its mission of reducing crime, disorder, and the fear of crime.
Traditionally, communications technology has been a key enabler in keeping officers on the beat in touch with the two force Control Rooms. Like many forces, Thames Valley Police relies on radio communications to send and receive information between officers and stations.
While this system has thus far proved more than adequate, modern-day policing poses even greater on-scene information demands. Call centres with access to the Police National Computer (PNC) helped disseminate information effectively, but there were a number of shortcomings with accessing data in this way.
Primarily there was a time lag between requesting information and receiving it. Secondly, there was always a risk that information would be misheard, or would be communicated at a point that was inconvenient to an officer. Equally, radio communication relies on an officer being in a position to write down information correctly, which is sometimes difficult in time-critical situations or in bad weather conditions.
As the amount of information an officer needs grows, the radio communications has become a less effective medium for transferring that information.
Another key factor in Thames Valley Police’s hunt for a solution was the increasing pressure from the U.K. government and public to see more police patrolling the streets, rather than at their desks doing admin. The force recognised that it could help tackle crime even further by giving officers access to data on the move, increasing officer visibility, and reducing the amount of time officers have to spend in the station on paper work.
One of the more time-consuming elements of an officer’s duties is replying to e-mail and setting up meetings at the station. While the prime application for Mobile Information was access to PNC, the ability to access e-mail and calendar information while out of the station has proved to be of great benefit to the officer on the beat.
Keith Gough, Project Manager at Thames Valley Police, says: “Thames Valley Police aims to earn the trust and respect of citizens by challenging, innovating, and achieving. We work in partnership with local residents to be tough on crime and the causes of crime, be accessible at all times and, most importantly, be visible to local people. We want our staff to be approachable and visible to the diverse communities we serve. As such, we will continue to develop new ways to give our communities greater accessibility to our officers and services.”
Gough continues: “IT plays a very important role in this modern police force to fight crime, record incidents, and gather and maintain intelligence. Covering such a large area, we need to be able to provide that information to officers where they need it, when they need it.”
Solution
By assessing its previous processes and aligning them with what the force wanted to achieve, it was obvious that it needed to implement a mobile solution. In 2004, after considering various alternatives, Thames Valley Police opted to use Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ devices running the Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 operating system.
Windows Mobile is an operating system with a small footprint. It integrates real-time capabilities with advanced Microsoft Windows® technologies and lets users build innovative, intuitive applications that run on multiple devices. It is ideal for use on small devices with limited memory of processing capabilities. As such, the devices and operating system selected by Thames Valley Police were ideal for its requirements.
Once the force had selected the devices and operating system, it decided to create a core application, called Smart Beat. This provides the fundamental capabilities of security and data handling required to provide the officer with aggregated data from a variety of line of business applications such as PNC and the Voters register. The officer is also able to make full use of the core capabilities provided by Microsoft Windows Mobile devices such as the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client and Microsoft Office Word.
The force worked closely with the Microsoft Technology Strategy Services (MTSS) team and Lynx Technology, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, to develop the Smart Beat application, which uses smart client technology.
Smart client development is a way of creating easily-deployed and managed client applications that maximise local resources to deliver a rich on or offline user experience. In selecting a smart client application, Thames Valley Police is ensuring that its employees benefit from the advantages of both traditional Web browsers and Microsoft Windows-based applications, without any of the disadvantages.
The decision to build a smart client application was a relatively easy one because this type of development meets Thames Valley Police’s need to have information available even when officers are in areas with poor or non-existent network coverage.
The development of the SmartBeat application was undertaken jointly by developers from Thames Valley Police, Microsoft and Lynx Technology. The Thames Valley Police developers got up to speed with the Microsoft .NET Framework and smart client coding techniques whilst the Microsoft and Lynx developers spent time understanding the language and the culture of the police. This was important because it meant that officers’ suggestions were quickly understood and put into practice.
Smart Beat was piloted by 20 officers from September 2004 to December 2004. Then, in March 2005, this pilot was extended to a further 50 officers using live data and in real policing scenarios. Officers involved in the pilot are from Oxford, a rural area near Banbury and the force’s Proactive Roads Policing Team.
The pilot uses O2 XDA II (and XDA2i and XDA2s and the Orange variants) handsets that synchronise automatically with central police computers. “We wanted the pilot to be carried out on an off-the-shelf system so that in the long term the force could evolve the solution as new technologies arose,” says Gough. “Using Microsoft technologies alongside leading-edge devices lets us do this. The alternative was to buy a system thatwas up-to-date today, but would stand still while technology moved forward.
“Also, having a solution that was flexible enough to connect to other systems and platforms was important because if the pilot continues successfully, as we anticipate it will, we will look to move the solution onto Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition enabled devices and connect it into other police systems.”
Benefits
Easy-to-Use Application Aids Productivity and Increases Officer Visibility
Thames Valley Police is committed to freeing up officers from administrative tasks that prevent them from getting out and doing what they do best—reassuring the public, and preventing and solving crime.
Smart clients, unlike Web-based applications, ensure that the right information gets to the right person, in the right format, at the right time to aid decision making. That’s because smart clients are action- rather than information-oriented like portals. This functionality is key for a police force.
The easy-to-use Smart Beat application is popular among users. This high level of acceptance can be attributed to the fact that they were involved in the development cycle to ensure relevance in the field. It’s also based on the familiar Microsoft user interface that officers are accustomed to using in the station. That familiarity, coupled with the ability to access the information they need, when they need it, means that officers spend, on average, an extra 40 minutes (or up to one hour – some get very little extra time) on the beat per shift.
Gough says: “This smart client application saves our officers an enormous amount of time. The ability to access information from a mobile device keeps officers closer to the public and will enable us to achieve our aim of increasing visibility to the equivalent of 100 extra officers on the street if we roll the solution out across Thames Valley Police.”
A Rich, Secure On- or Off-line Experience
Gough says: “We opted to use a smart client application, rather than a Web-based application, because of the ability to work both on and offline. Officers can request and enter information even when they are out of network coverage. Then, when the officer is next in an area of coverage, the device picks up where it left off.”
The devices communicate with core Police systems using Web services to ensure data is always up to date. Information is retained on the devices for 24 hours, which reduces the need for unnecessary data duplication or additional phone calls or information searchers. As a security-conscious organisation, Thames Valley Police has worked hard to ensure that high levels of security and authentication prevent any unauthorised access to the information contained on the devices.
“We have been careful to ensure that there is enough information on the system to be useful to an officer on the beat,” says Gough. “At the same time, we have ensured that security is layered in such a way that the system knows when it is being tampered with and there is no usable information on the system if it is stolen. In addition to passwords and PIN numbers, we make use of RSA Security Tokens.
“We loaned one of our devices to a company that works closely with government agencies and police forces and specialises in testing security. It was originally meant to have the device for a day but ended up keeping it for months. It still wasn’t able to break our security levels and gain access to the information held on the device.”
Officers Able to Do 60 Percent More Checks on Vehicles and People
The key purpose of this project was to let officers carry out their duties more effectively. According to Gough, this is being achieved very effectively in the pilot stage, with officers able to carry out approximately 60 percent more checks on vehicles and people during their shift than they would have been able to using radio communications.
The reason so many more checks are being completed is the speed of response over the handhelds. “Doing a PNC check on the radio via the bureau would return the information in three or four minutes. Using the handhelds, it takes less than 30 seconds, the officers get sufficient detail for any actions they may need to take and nothing is misheard,” says Gough. “As a result, we are finding that officers who are not taking part in the pilot are requesting checks from fellow officers who are taking part so that they can benefit from the speed and amount of information that can be accessed from the handhelds.
“The more checks our officers can make, the more likely that they will be able to catch perpetrators of crime and continue in their aim to keep this area a safe and enjoyable place to live.”
Demonstrating the Value of Smart Client to Other Forces
Thames Valley Police has always considered itself to be an innovative force and is demonstrating this leadership in action with the Smart Beat application. Many other forces have already expressed interest in the pilot and are keen to build on ThamesValley’s experience.
Sergeant Steve Fisher, User Representative, Mobile Information at Thames Valley Police says: “We are very confident that this smart client application is the right way forward for us and other forces or bodies such as the prison or probation service.
“It’s such a leap forward from where we were that I can only relate it to when I first joined the police and we moved away from two radios (one to talk into and one to listen with) to a one piece radio. If officers can make use of these devices rather than radioing in all the time, it frees up the control room for those who need to make radio contact quickly. That can only be a good thing for our officers, the force and, ultimately, the public.”
Microsoft Windows Mobile
For more information about Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones visit: