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Recording - an analytical future
Recording equipment has evolved from the reel to reel devices of yesteryear. With this in mind and the impact that converging services, and the capabilities that recording solutions now offer the mission critical arena, we take a closer look at the current trends and what the future holds...
Voice recorders have evolved over the last 25 years from huge reel to reel devices which were very cumbersome to operate, into today’s solutions where simple software or a single interface card sits within an industry standard server. This has increased the resilience of the platforms enormously, as it has meant that industry standard components such as duplicated hard disks, hot swappable power supplies, and dual processors can be incorporated, ensuring that the hardware and software continues to operate without any single point of failure.
As explained by Paul Manyweathers, managing director, Activa Solutions, “This has also had an effect on the overall capital and running costs of the solutions, as industry standard components are readily available, and the support can fit within the individual organisations IT support model meaning that most operations can provide first line support themselves without the need to refer to the manufacturer.”
Craig Pumfrey, Nice Systems, also believes that the developments in recording solutions have led to high quality, ease of use, access reliability all core functionalities that were now assumed by the customer as almost defacto. And whilst each element was certainly a priority with many recording solution providers, it should not be assumed as standard. “Users should really specify the level of quality as now devices can be tuned for higher performance.”
centralised recording
A move towards centralised call recording using the Internet and 'hosted' technology is a trend that we are currently seeing, explained Tina Southgate, Business Systems. “This allows calls to be recorded from several sites and accessed securely from one central point. It rationalises call recording, and helps multiple sites and mobile calls to be captured and accessed consistently. Centralising and rationalising call recording also helps integration with external storage applications such as NAS. More calls are being recorded and there is greater need for calls to be accessed quickly even from several months or possibly years ago. With the ability to record centrally and store call recordings to NAS, (Network Attached Storage) call recordings can be found in a few moments on-line from any desktop PC attached to the network, compared to traditional methods of having to search through a library of DAT tapes manually to locate a call which is several years old.”
analytical recording
The use of analytics is a further trend, which is impacting heavily on the call recording market. This technology automatically scans the spoken words in all call recordings to enable a call or groups of calls to be found that are relevant to a specific incident. For example a person's name or reference to a particular location could be 2 keywords relating to an incident. After the incident or during it, searching for all calls during the past few weeks that contain these words can help officers draw together all relevant information relating to that incident.
Manyweathers agrees adding, “Modern systems are also much easier to use, with web based replay interfaces and a wide array of search criteria. Long gone are the days when a recording search was based around the date and time, and the operator position. Now recordings can be searched for by incident number, radio talk group, operators name or log in ID, telephone number data such as CLI, and this has reduced the overall search times required significantly. An important spin off from this is the increased use of quality assessments made using the voice recordings, to ensure that operational staff are providing the very best of services. My company has now integrated a ready to use evaluation software as part of the voice recorder front end, meaning that any voice call can be scored using a template that is tailored to the operational needs of the service. In this way a far more practical view of overall quality can be made, with reports generated on trends and developments over time.”
John Gurney, managing director, Frequnetis also pointed out that there is a greater convergence between all communications media such as location based systems, video, voice etc, with this in mind and the need for statistical and analytical information to be generated at speed, helps with investigations. “Recording solutions can also provide the ability to respond immediately to investigative issues.”
In fact, Frequentis is currently discussing a synchronised system (which the company already operates within the Air traffic Control arena) bringing real time benefits to public safety agencies. “For instance,” Gurney said, “With the number of applications being recorded in the past it could take several days to synchronise all the media captured and analyse it, we have the ability to reduce this down to a matter of seconds, thereby increasing the efficiency of operator time.”
In addition to which, the ability to tag each recording with an incident number, (as currently seen with North Wales Police) certainly helps improve investigative situations. Furthermore as pointed out by Gurney, because of the advent of digital recording solutions, from an evidential viewpoint, it means that data (and voice) recordings are much harder, if indeed virtually impossible to be tampered with.
The need to share information, in line with the CCA, in an emergency situation is also having an impact on the development for recording solutions. As pointed out by Manyweathers, “It will be important that the converged services can gain fast and easy access to their own critical recordings when necessary, and that there are no delays due to the increased traffic being stored on the system. This is achieved by ensuring that individual user log in’s to the system direct that user to the recordings only relevant to them, very quickly. However a benefit is also introduced, as it becomes far easier to share relevant recordings between the services, as it is now possible to enable other users to access ‘your own’ recordings, or to E mail the recording to a colleague at the click of a mouse, with notes added and sections of the recording bookmarked for replay.”
Craig Pumfrey and Adam Smith, Nice Systems, have been working with Hampshire Police for a number of years and point out that recording equipment, should not simply capture information but be able to interrogate it, thereby enabling more forces who are using online storage thus optimising efficiency “Furthermore, public safety users are seeing more requests for recorded data and the expectations have risen for a more rapid result, which means that the information stored can now be a useful tool when investigating incidents in real time.”
Pumfrey also suggests that integration with CAD systems and ICCS systems will enable a better workflow. “Using independent references to statistical data stored and that which has been recorded (i.e. the incident number) is quite a challenge, and currently we see this as the holy grail, to have the incident number referenced across all systems. This however needs to be driven by CAD system vendors.”
Discussing how other technologies within the control room environment is impacting on recording systems, Manyweathers adds, “The roll out of digital radio systems has enhanced the potential use of the voice recorder, as previous analogue systems meant that it would be necessary to trawl through possibly hours of open radio traffic to find the relevant recording. New TETRA installations in the UK cannot currently benefit from the vast array of additional tagging possible, as in other parts of Europe, as the recording interfaces here unfortunately remain analogue connections, however it is hoped that in the not too distant future digital connectivity which our recorders currently accept, can be made available to the recording industry in the UK.”
training issues
The use of call recording can also play a major role in training and improving service as well as for regulation. Many control centres are using call recording to help train frontline staff and monitor the level of service being given on the telephone. Business Systems worked with Surrey Police to develop call handling guidelines for call takers in their control centre contact centre. These guidelines are now being rolled out nationwide. To back this trend the use of quality monitoring software is becoming more common place in the police for example. This allows team leaders to listen back to a random sample of calls and score the calls according to pre-defined criteria. The allows the measurement of how well staff following call handling guidelines. Reporting on call scores allows appropriate training to be planned in areas that need development. Reports on call scores using this software also provide evidence on adherence and improvements that are being made in the level of service being provided.
Gurney also points out that synchronising with CAD systems, aside from the importance of allocating all data with incident numbers, also means that you can provide an exceptional training aid.
a developing technology
Call recording solutions are being improved all the time. Newer solutions in the market place enable larger volumes of calls to be recorded and stored. The Vocal Range of recorders from Business Systems adopts an open systems architecture which provides a flexible modular design, enabling the easy upgrade of a call recorder to capture more calls. This is what will be needed to record more calls and information from larger control rooms. Also better links to NAS means that call recorders today and in the future will have no limitations in the number of calls that can be recorded and the amount of time that these calls can be safely kept with no degradation of quality. All call recordings can now be available on-line, instantly as search and retrieval software works with NAS enabling years of call recordings to be interrogated and a particular relevant call to be pinpointed in just moments. The need for more recording with the convergence will drive more efficient recorders with even better capacities.
and to the future...
There will be further development in the use of analytics. As well as searching for calls on time or date, calls can already be searched on depending on the spoken words or phrases in a call. There is a mass of intelligence in all call recordings that can be analysed on the spoken content. In the future analytics will be used more and more to run reports on spoken words and phrases to identify trends. This could be used to report on the types of calls that are being received and possible trends in increases of certain calls. This could therefore help with planning resource of officers with particular specialist training. y tapping into the intelligence contained in these call recordings and running reports to identify trends, improvements or peaks and troughs in particular events, organisations will be able to gain a clearer view of what their future requirements are as well as monitoring levels of service that are given to the public.
Agreeing Manyweathers concludes, “Aside from systems becoming smaller, having greater capacities, and more search and replay criteria, the next recording milestone is likely to be the increased use of word spotting and speech recognition technology, which is actually already available in a limited format. Future voice recorders will have the ability to instantly alert an operator if it thinks the caller is a previous hoax caller, or alternatively the recording archive could be scanned to highlight any voice matches of previous calls from any individual recently recorded. The technology would also enable live calls to be scanned to alert a supervisor if any abusive or aggressive call was in progress.
