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Police Direct – Making a Real Difference
Added: (Tue Apr 29 2008)
Just over one year ago, 1st April 2007, the National Police Portal was switched off - leaving no national UK capability for broadcasting police-led advice to the public via the web, telephone, email and SMS in the event of a major incident.
A fact not missed by Tim O’Connor of BAPCO, in his opening remarks at a recent conference on warning and informing the public. Tim also noted that failure to handle a situation without effective dialogue is disastrous, and that Warning and Informing services should engage community groups by phone, SMS, MMS, pager fax and other means according to individual preferences.
Thankfully for residents of Suffolk in the UK, such a capability has continued through Police Direct (www.policedirect.co.uk) in a partnership between Suffolk Constabulary, HTK and Cable&Wireless.
But why is such a capability so important, and why should people in Suffolk be so proud of their successful campaign to keep Police Direct running?
Local Community Safety
The National Community Safety Plan 2008-11 identifies a number of objectives for improving community safety. Under Public Service Agreement 23, community safety partnerships should give individuals and communities a clear understanding of how anti-social behavior and other crime and disorder issues are being addressed.
Day-to-day community safety advice is a great example of how Police Direct can enrich a community. A customer satisfaction survey conducted by Suffolk Constabulary in November / December 2006 showed that:
• Over 99% of respondents felt that Police Direct was a useful service.
• Over 53% felt safer than before, by receiving messages from Police Direct.
• Over 58% had a better opinion of Suffolk Constabulary than before
These three measures speak volumes; that the public feels their money is being spent wisely; that fear of crime is being reduced; that the local police force is addressing their concerns.
Regional Security and Resilience
The National Security Strategy (March 2008) addresses wide ranging national and international issues that affect homeland security, from counter-terrorism to management of floods and influenza pandemic. The Civil Contingencies Act provides much of the framework for these activities, but does not prescribe the tools that should be used to provide “warning and informing” advice to the public.
The operational requirements for national Warning and Informing systems can vary significantly from those for day-to-day community messaging systems; for example a bias towards broadcast media, more complex inter-agency operational protocols and the need for stringent integrity, availability and confidentiality of the ICT systems used to provide information to the public and partner agencies.
Police Direct addresses these key issues. As a hosted managed service within PNN3 it is a secure and nationally available solution. It is also capable of sending large numbers of messages to the public (it is based on the same HTK technology that powered the previous national portal).
Flexibility for the Future
There are of course many, many scenarios in which a Warning and Informing system can contribute to public safety – and the technologies are often far simpler to manage than the human resources and business processes required for effective, secure and cohesive community engagement.
Systems and processes need to be robust and secure, but they also need to be simple for the public to understand and use. Unless a cohesive framework is developed, the ever-vigilant UK citizen will need to update their contact details on a multitude of government services in order to be sure of receiving information when they need it most.
If managed appropriately, as in Suffolk, services like Police Direct can make a real difference by offering a single access point for the public to register and receive information about a wide range of community safety issues; with the flexibility to address locally-focused issues as well as regional or even national incident-driven communications.
One size will never fit all, but the Police Direct model in Suffolk is one that should be considered by all community safety partnerships in the UK.
Justin Bowser is Director of Public Sector services at HTK, and has been involved in technical and business aspects of police-public interface services, nationally and internationally, since 2001.
For further information contact pressoffice@htk.co.uk