Police BlackBerry Scheme Slated In New Report

The idea that smartphones could help the British police reduce paperwork and therefore lower operational costs has been blasted in a new report by MPs.

The mobile technology in policing report, written by the Commons Public Accounts Committee, takes Home Office to task over its £71 million scheme to deliver 41,000 BlackBerry handsets and other smartphones to police officers across the country.

Bedfordshire Police

The thinking behind the scheme was that the phones would allow officers to spend more time on the beat, increase efficiency, and reduce the amount of paperwork.

Indeed, back in October 2010, Research in Motion made some bold claims as to the cost savings that police forces in the UK were going to achieve, all thanks to the use of its BlackBerry platform.

RIM said at the time that across the UK, police forces using the BlackBerry platform were collectively making savings of over £112 million per year.

When speaking to TechWeekEurope at the time, RIM cited the example of Bedfordshire police, whose officers were using their BlackBerry handsets to access everyday police data from the Police National Computer (PNC), without the need to occupy the radio network or take up the time of police operators.

Smartphone Scheme

The government began to equip all police forces with smartphones in 2008, in a move that was meant to save £125 million. However, according to the report, the actual savings achieved so far stand at just £600,000.

“The Home Office focused more on providing the kit than on whether the benefits envisaged were actually being realised and by when,” said Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, and veteran Labour politician. “Neither the Home Office nor the National Policing Improvement Agency know what the benefits have been and whether value for money has been achieved.”

“Even in terms of getting devices into the hands of officers, execution has been haphazard,” said Hodge. “Some forces have no devices at all whereas others have one for each officer as well as their support staff.”

But Hodge did concede that some police forces (presumably Bedfordshire police included) have used the devices to improve efficiency, but she said that most have not.

“And, although most forces reported that the devices allowed officers to spend more time out of the station, some said that using the devices actually led officers to spend more time in the station,” she added.

Labour Scheme

Hodge claimed that not enough attention had been paid to outcomes when the scheme was being launched.  “The Programme was supposed to contribute £125 million to cashable savings by the police service. So far has it managed a woeful £600,000 – less than one per cent of the public money spent on the scheme.”

To be fair to the Coalition government, the Mobile Information Programme was inherited from Labour. It started in 2008 and was scrapped in 2010.

This is not the first time police use of IT has been criticised. Earlier this week, the Home Affairs Committee raised fresh concerns about IT procurement for British police.

And in December police chiefs rejected the first draft of government’s plan, announced in July 2011, to get a private company to manage the procurement of IT systems for British police forces.

This came after a damning report by MPs last September, which stated that the vast number of incompatible IT systems within the UK’s 43 police forces was hindering the fight against crime.

And in March, the police admitted that it will be using command and control software dating back to the 1980s for protection of the upcoming Olympic Games in London.

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