Blog Entry 2

Police must share good practice about using Blackberrys and other mobile devices

A report from the public accounts committee on the £71m costing programme to equip 41000 police officers with Blackberry’s, says that some have used it to improve efficiency, but most have not. Margaret Hodge, the chair of the public accounts committee, said that the goal the programme should give officers the opportunity to spend more time on the streets, but, for some officers it led to spend more time in the station. In order to make the most out of the investment already made, the Home Office must provide a clear guidance on what police forces must buy centrally, with the benefits of it. For now, forces have found that entering a crime report, for example, requires a full-sized keyboard and a larger screen.

I find this an interesting development to follow, for I don’t believe in using hand-devices as a word processor. As you can read in the full article, most police officers still use a small sort of laptop to enter a report, or what so ever. Entering a text in a blackberry cost too much time. And what about falling damage…I don’t think that using a blackberry will provide more police force on the streets. It’s prone to theft, and is used by people all over the world. This means it is meant for private use. Therefore, all kinds of data from the police force could become prone to theft as well. It’s too fragile, in my opinion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/government-computing-network/2012/may/30/police-blackberrys-mobile-devices