news Victoria Police’s IT systems are so out of date that police officers often simply go home to open modern documents on their own PCs, a new report has found, and officers are also required to fax hardcopy documentation into a central repository following the end of their shift.
Over the past several years, it has emerged that the basic ability of Victoria Police to deliver fundamental ICT services and projects to its workforce has almost completely broken down. A broad-based investigation of the organisation published in March 2012 found that it had no ability to deliver major ICT projects, and several major IT systems, such as the LEAP operational policing database are several decades old and need to be replaced.
The systemic problems have already had tragic consequences at Victoria Police, with the force in February laying part of the blame for an 11-year-old boy’s death at the time at the doorstep of its ailing IT systems, which failed to provide officers with sufficient information to apprehend an offender in a timely manner. The organisation has attempted to address the problems through a combination of new funding, IT outsourcing and through new governance structures, but it still appears to struggle with basic issues.
In November last year Victoria Police appointed as its new chief information officer a senior police officer with a distinguished career, Wendy Steendam, but who appeared to have no specific experience with IT operations.
This week, as first reported by ZDNet, Victoria Police released a Blue Paper document which it considers a vision for the organisation in 2025. The report (available online in PDF format) makes plain that Victoria Police is starkly aware of the widespread ICT project and service delivery challenges it faces. The report states:
“Almost a decade and a half into the twenty first century, Victoria Police labours with twentieth century technology. Victoria Police officers regard the poor state of the organisation’s technology and IT in particular as a severe constraint on their ability to do their job, and compare it unfavourably with police organisations in other states and English speaking countries. This state of affairs is the result of funding and management decisions – including omissions – over many years.”
One of the problems highlighted by the report is that the desktop PC systems used by Victoria Police are so out of date they can often not handle modern documents.
“The VictoriaPolice computer network still uses Windows XP, which has been superseded by three newer operating systems,” the report states. “Many police encounter difficulty in opening documents created using newer programs and resort to taking the documents home to read, print or convert to a usable format. The operating system will be upgraded by the end of 2014, for the first time in many years.”
In addition, police officers are unable to get enough storage space to store data they need. “Insufficient computer storage space presents a real capacity issue, with some members unable to readily store and access data (such as audio-visual files) needed to perform their duties,” the report found.
And, incredibly, all police officers appear to be forced to send in faxed data at the end of their shift.
“Victoria Police has lacked a comprehensive, long-term strategy to guide the governance and business use of, and appropriate investment in, its information,” the report states. “As a consequence, the organisation does not have an integrated approach to information management. For example, the Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) record management database does not include intelligence, which is stored on the separate Interpose database and is not available to all operational police during a shift.”
“There have been a number of high profile lapses of information security and police face an enormous information burden. Victoria Police’s current operational policing information environment comprises more than 100 processes and 10 critical systems. These require laborious manual handling, data entry and duplication of effort, which in turn leads to incomplete, delayed and varied quality of data for decision support and less time for core policing duties.”
“For example, typically at the end of a shift a police officer is required to return to a station to enter data into systems, and complete and fax hardcopy documentation to a centralised area for retyping into the ageing LEAP database.”
Other issues also abound: In country areas, police rely on an analogue radio system that “is not secure and can be intercepted by almost anyone who wants to listen to police conversations”. Police often carry and use their own personal audio recording devices because Victoria Police is not able to provide such devices for them. As in other jurisdictions, many workarounds exist, with the Blue Paper stating that some 600 stand-alone programs and databases exist.
Resolving the issues
Victoria Police has put in place a program which aims to resolve some of the issues. Dubbed the Police Information Process and Practice Reform Program (PIPP), it focuses on improving processes and practices, with IT being the critical factor. PIPP is developing a strategic view of Victoria Police’s information, IT and business needs, to better meet the changing requirements of the community and the police.
PIPP received $23.3 million, over four years, in the 2013-14 budget to fund two projects essential to improving police systems. The first, the Sustain Project, will focus on necessary maintenance of the ageing LEAP and Interpose systems (Interpose delivers intelligence and case management functionality) for the coming five years.
he second project, the Transform Project, is developing a long-term, integrated and sustainable solution for managing investigations and intelligence to support future police service delivery, as part of a long-term information management strategy.
As a priority, PIPP focuses on creating a single point of access to the information held in multiple disparate systems. PIPP will also target investment in changes to processes and automation of processes to reduce administrative tasks. Further, it will increase the availability and accessibility of information through mobile technology in the field and introduce new service channels for the community, such as online reporting.
As part of the PIPP process, an application has been introduced to simplify specific high-volume policing processes (family violence and field contact reporting). This application improves the availability and overall quality of data on LEAP by providing a user interface that enables reports submitted by members to be immediately available via the LEAP database. It reduces duplicate data entry and provides members with the ability to pre-populate required forms with data already captured. This application has enabled process changes that reduce time spent by frontline members completing family violence and field contact reports.
It is conservatively estimated that improvements in family violence processes alone, have released an extra 72,000 police hours for patrol and proactive duties, at an equivalent value of $3.8 million. It is also estimated that there has been a 30 per cent reduction in the time spent on the relevant administrative documentation by front line police. These figures do not take into account reductions in back office data entry requirements, or the enhancements gained from the field contact reports. With the success of this initial implementation, expansion of this application to all crime reporting and offender processing is planned for 2014 to gain further efficiencies.
Victoria Police also has a huge IT outsourcing program under way. The overall value of the effort will reportedly be worth up to $340 million and see five separate outsourcing contracts consolidated into one substantial contract. Further information about that initiative can be found in an article published on the subject in July 2013.
opinion/analysis
It should be clear to everyone concerned by now that Victoria Police has massive problems when it comes to fundamental ICT project and service delivery; in fact, I would rate the organisation as currently one of the worst in Australia on this basis. This Blue Paper makes it very clear that this issue is having a huge impact on the organisation’s ability to do its work. Police officers being forced to fax in reports after their shifts? Being forced to use their own audio recording devices and PCs because Victoria Police is incapable of delivering even semi-modern functional systems? Police radio systems which anyone can listen into? This all sounds like a bad joke.
And as we’ve already seen demonstrated starkly in practice, lives are on the line. Let’s hope Victoria Police can start to improve things. The warnings signs have been there for many years already. If not, I fear we will see more tragedies.
This a direct result of government rhetoric on policing and other front line services. Every election you about funding for more police on the beat but they always forget you need support systems for these extra police on the beat. Government funds the wages and training of extra police but rarely is the funding increase to cope with the extra strain on back end services that increasing numbers of personal cause, ongoing improvements program get delayed and eventually it turns into process of just trying to support what you already have with no money left over to work on improving systems and adopting to change.
This is a repeat of problems in other areas of the public service and doesn’t just affect IT infrastructure. We will continue to see this problem repeat across the board as long as the talk is all about funding front line personal and not about effective funding of the services as a whole.
+1 health and education in particular.
I would suggest that the Vic Police example is just the worst of a bad (Policing bunch) of poor ( generous me) ICT systems on a state and I would suggest, a Federal level.
Police ICT is a very neglected area (opinion based on some experience) and usually performs poorly in the area of Policing needs. NEPI (National Exchange of Police Information) suffers from state rivalries and differing privacy laws in the “attempt to exchange information”.
Poor Police ICT advantages criminals of all categories. Facilitates Interstate unlawful activities and severely affects the ability of Police to do, what I as a citizen, expect them to do, Police.
Policing unfortunately, is firstly a paper war, exacerbated by computer systems which do not reduce/simplify/hasten this war. Then its a information war, something computer systems should facilitate but do not. Then its getting out and doing what needs to be done.
Current Police ICT systems do not, in any way facilitate Policing. The VicPol system is perhaps, just the worst example of a very neglected and fragmented, Policing ICT systems.
Any broad National investigation into Police ICT systems will show –
Neglect/Underfunding
Failed programs
Poor choice
A failure to share information
Evidence of State rivalries and jealousies
These a just a few points. Remember this. It took the States and the Commonwealth over a decade to agree on so called “National Traffic Regulations”. This piece of legislation is still a mess of un agreed upon differences. There is plenty of evidence that state ICT projects are a disaster (QLD Health).
Policing ICT is a disaster area. Poor old Victoria has been unable to keep the lid on it. The rest just plug away in their own little world, with their eyes tightly shut.
One does not need a new OS to open DOCX and XLSX documents. If XP is patched and updated (might be a problem now) the applications can be updated.
If VicPol want to open the latest docs, install OpenOffice or LibreOffice onto each PC. The learning curve is less to go from Office 2003 to {Open|Libre}Office to Office {2007|2010|2013}.
I reckon the ‘opportunities for improvement’ will be in the backend, not the desktop. Get some decent electronic workflows going, electronic forms, mobile data collection etc and stop the paper shuffling. Get information into a machine readable digital form as soon as possible and then the cleverness can begin.
Don’t even need Open/Libre Office.
Office 2007 and 2010 work on XP and are more than capable of reading their own documents*.
* YMMV
Oh and are you going to support all the users of LibreOffice yourself? At least you can call MS if you have issues with the product.
You could:
Obtain free help from,
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/IRC
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Mailing_List
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA
or professional support from https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/
Same problems exist in QLD
All money is directed toward frontlines services, revenue services and recruitment. Anything else isn’t budgeted or you would have no money to spend
When you have a conservative government in power then makes extra difficult to justify your upgrade or project costs
So Victorian police officers are exfiltrating documents to open later on personal PCs – presumably on non-encrypted USB sticks or external hard drives, or by emailing them in cleartext to their personal email addresses. This would seems like a massive breach of privacy legislation that the Victorian Privacy Commissioner should be all over.
And I wonder how many of those personal PCs are secured appropriately (hint: none), and when end-of-life are being disposed of in accordance with relevant information security management policies and guidelines (hint: also none)?
It hasn’t changed since I was a uniformed member in 1986-89 using the PATROL system, or when I was contracting there in 2004/5. What people don’t seem to realise is that ICT comes out of the Police budget when it should be a government spend (outside of budget) and also that the people who make the submissions on what they think the Police need, are the contractors and consulting companies who are supplying the services. It is pretty easy to fix – the companies who supply the services currently should be banned from tendering for, or recommending the new services – and that must include subsidiary companies as well.
Fucking hell just buy a bunch of shitty computers install some light-weight UNIX distro and use libre office. problem solved and no money to micro$shill you can still use the shitty microsoft docx etc formats for compatibility.
I wonder how much the goverment spends on licensing old, dated and overall shit software every year
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