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Northern Constabulary secures digital notebooks

Hi-Tech Scotland reporter | Monday June 16, 2008



Northern Constabulary’s Deputy Chief Constable Garry Sutherland has been involved in a national project to bring in electronic notebooks for Police officers across Scotland.

DCC Sutherland is the ACPOS (Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland) executive lead for Scotland on the National Mobile Data Project and is responsible for pushing the project forward for Scotland.

Police Minister Tony McNulty MP announced the funding at a press conference on 2008), following Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pledge last year to make money available to get PDAs into the hands of the country’s officers.

The ACPOS National Mobile Data Project will create a national on-line PDA e-notebook that will link information gathered and uploaded into the information distribution hub, with existing and future national systems providing the front end of a completely electronic information management system.

The PDA e-notebooks will allow Police officers and Police staff to electronically gather, manage and process information at the point of contact with the public, saving valuable time and reducing the amount of time spent in an office.

Deputy Chief Constable Garry Sutherland said: “As the portfolio holder for Mobile Data within ACPOS Operational Policing and the Mobile Data Executive Lead for ACPOS Business Change I am delighted with the award of £2,500,000 for the ACPOS collaborative bid.

“I would like to thank all those that assisted the ACPOS National Mobile Data Project Team in pulling together an excellent bid in such a short time scale.

“This money will help built upon the hard work already undertaken across the Scottish Forces to focus in on one national programme as we move forward together.

“As well as getting electronic notebooks to assist with frontline Policing this award also offers us a real opportunity to set out the infrastructure for mobile data that will deliver long term benefits.”

The ACPOS National Mobile Data Project will also seek to make available to all Scottish forces the IMAGIN (Images Made Available to Groups or Individuals over Networks) solution developed by Northern Constabulary.

At the moment this application can only send images and text to Motorola MTH800 handheld radios but by utilising the Scottish wide mobile access gateway, IMAGIN will be expanded to send images to any appropriate terminal, including PDAs.

Northern Constabulary was the first Police force in the UK to provide every officer with on the street access to images and CCTV footage using IMAGIN, providing major benefits in reducing crime and improving public safety.

Officers will no longer be required to return to the office for briefings or to access pictures of missing persons or wanted individuals as these images can now be accessed immediately.

And the phased introduction of a new voice banking system for officers across Northern Constabulary will mean they will spend even more time out and about in our communities.

The IMAGIN technology is similar to that used to make web pages available to mobile phones, except that the system uses the secure Airwave digital communications network used by all UK forces. It is a welcome addition to the Police officer’s toolbox and will assist them by allowing them to view images of missing persons, wanted persons, active criminals, CCTV, maps or other digital images whilst on patrol.

These new systems provide a boost for Northern Constabulary Chief Constable Ian Latimer, who stated recently that he wants to reduce bureaucracy and increase Police visibility on the streets of the Highlands and Islands.

www.northern.police.uk

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