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Avon and Somerset considers its options
The Avon and Somerset Constabulary mobile information team consists of Ian Steel (Project Manager), PC Gareth Satherley (seconded to the project as the Business Benefits Officer and User Representative), Leigh Hodgkins (Technical Specialist) and Elaine Avent (System Support). BAPCO Journal spoke to Ian and Gareth to explain more about the ongoing development.
What made you decide to start trialing mobile devices?
Steel: We’ve been looking at delivering mobile information for some time. Initially this started as a piece of research and development in partnership with a third party supplier aimed at increasing the time officers spent out of station. It comprised of 14 vehicle based units delivering services over a mix of GPRS and Airwave. The services delivered to some seventy trained officers included PNC, voters checks and mapping services but stopped short of accessing any of the force’s own back end systems. The officers response overall tended to follow the theme “This is good, but…” in that it was going to have to deliver a great deal more to meet operational needs. A later trial of a small sample of handheld devices seemed to indicate that these weren’t fully suited to response policing, instead supporting the “slower” less time-critical end of the business, primarily due to their speed and ease of use.
We then entered a phase of reviewing our business needs through officer surveys and scenario-based interviews. In addition we continued to review progress of the NPIA (then PITO) trials and what other forces were achieving. We were particularly inspired by the way West Yorkshire went about their implementation with their own back end development, and decided upon a strategy of developing our own web based access to existing databases.
Although equally impressed with the work in Lothian and Borders where a forms-based system was being developed, we made a conscious decision to first provide officers with access to information out on the street, and then look to collect information through forms at a later stage.
How are the trials currently going?
Steel: We have issued the Motorola (previously Symbol) MC35 to 450 users spread across two BCU’s; Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset, which encompasses Weston-super-Mare, Clevedon, Nailsea and Portishead.
Satherley: Obviously we are still in the early stages of the pilot. We are continually evaluating the device, system architecture and the services being delivered to the user. We are about to conduct a three-month evaluation and user feedback survey and will be looking in depth at all aspects of the pilot so far and in particular: ease of use, speed of services delivered, the operational requirements and future needs.
I regularly meet with colleagues on the pilot districts and seek feedback in relation to the devices and services available on them and it would appear that the devices do have some real benefits to frontline officers. The positive feedback stems currently from officers having the opportunity to conduct their own PNC Checks, send and receive emails away from the station, conduct quick address checks and also view custody photo’s to aid with identification.
The negative feedback stems from the speed that information is returned to the devices on occasions (service coverage) as well as difficulty with the different security protocols (number of password entries required) currently in use for getting onto the device and its many services. It is also becoming apparent that the different roles of the user bring in totally different requirements for device – such as response teams seem more adept to the 14 vehicle sets we currently operate on the North Somerset District.
Why did you decide to trial the MC35 over other devices?
Steel: We looked at eight different PDAs and carried out a technical evaluation and a series of officer workshops across various districts. The workshops were used to give officers an opportunity to see and use the devices to see what they liked, what they didn’t, and the feedback used to make our decision. The Symbol MC35 is a rugged enterprise device and has many qualities such as high quality screen resolution that was particularly good in daylight conditions. It also offers a high quality camera. The MC25 was certainly a favourite across the workshops although some users did express concern over the size of the keyboard. As with all pilots the feedback from users will be used to assess the usability and influence any future choice of device.
How have the officers responded to the MC35 in general?
Steel: Most of the officers have adapted quite well to using the PDA. Where issues have arisen these have tended to be system-related.
The MC35 has a physical and on-screen keyboard. A decision was made early on that the on-screen keyboard would not be used to ensure maximum screen display. However problems with some officers logging on may be attributed to the usability of the keyboard. For instance we were unable to display the true state of the CAPS and function lock, so a page is now displayed at log on failure asking the officer to input certain keys and advising on the correct state.
The keyboard is well suited to inputting relatively small amounts of text for searching or brief email responses, but may not suit all users for larger data inputting. A separate assessment of data inputting using the on screen facility in comparison with the physical keyboard will be carried out prior to the next round of training. Strathclyde only allow their officers to use the on-screen facility so maybe there is something we can learn there.
Other factors affecting the usage is the timeout after no activity which at twenty minutes is proving frustrating, along with the requirement to have a second log on for the PNC service. It is hoped both of these can be improved upon in the next round of development.
Satherley: This is very new technology for the majority of police officers and police community support officers. The role of the users differs across the spectrum from response teams, neighborhood beat managers, PCSOs to officers in intelligence roles and CID. The project team needs to deliver services via mobile information that are easy to navigate, easy to use and that actually reduce the time things take out on the street to complete.
Are you pleased with how things are progressing?
Steel: To begin with we were. We’ve worked over two districts and the first district really took to the devices and things moved quite quickly. Since then, however, we’ve encountered some real challenges. The device is a tool that needs to work for and benefit the officer. In our second geographic district we hit some real coverage issues that were worse than expected and – compounded with other factors – they have affected the officer’s view of the device.
When a request is made for data, whether PNC, storm incident logs or custody photo records, a connection to the force’s data network is required at that instant, unless some of the data is cached on the device. Although our system can cope with service losses of up to 30 seconds it is not handling prolonged outages very well, which has resulted in a poor grade of performance for some officers. At the same time as addressing these specific problems there are plans to migrate the system to run a smart client on the device.
This means that the device will now host part of the application and store some data such as incident logs allowing off line retrieval. The main factor in adopting this approach is to improve on the single inputting of data, for example a name, to then execute multiple searches.
Satherley: We are about to embark on phase two of the project – this will focus more on the day-to-day use of mobile information with the introduction of e-forms, which will reduce the amount of pads and folders officers need to carry. This phase will also focus on the implementation of mobile data terminals in vehicles which will again improve services available to officers and reduce the dependency on the communications department to conduct simple checks. The vehicle sets should prove faster with better coverage.
What are some of the benefits you wish to see from the device you choose?
Satherley: Speed, resilience and most importantly they have to be easy to operate.
What are your plans for the future?
Satherley: Firstly, we will be continuing to work with the MC35s already in operation on the pilot districts. We will be looking at the training delivered to the user and at ways we need to develop and tailor the courses to suit the needs of the user. This may include help pages delivered to the device as part of the smart client approach, or to web site accessed from the desk top. We intend to expand the vehicle deployment with some consideration being given to portable units.
Steel: As well as the move to a smart client approach, work is already underway to extend the range of services delivered to the mobile environment. This includes use of an API (application protocol interface) delivered by Northgate to give read-and-write access to our intelligence and crime system, Guardian. Access to the Driver Validation Service and the National Mobile Property Register are also being scoped along with a suite of forms based processes.
We will also look at other handheld devices and see how we could work with and use those with the current services we have rolled out and indeed intend to role out of the next few months.
