Policing in the island state is underway with a five-year program to completely overhaul its IT systems, including an upgrade to the TRIM 7 records management platform that will provide officers in the field with Web access to TRIM by mobile devices.

Known as IT15, the overall goal of the project is to modernise and consolidate the ageing IT infrastructure and applications supporting 1800 staff in Tasmania’s Department of Police and Emergency Management, which includes around 1200 frontline police officers.

As part of the IT15 program it will migrate to Web applications running SQL back ends.

The TRIM records management platform is being retained, and has been upgraded to Version 7.1 to provide a Web client able to be accessed on mobile devices.

“We are still assessing whether that will be the Saffron interface or the native TRIM7 web client,” said Murray Lawler, Manager, Information Technology Services, Department of Police and Emergency Management.

“When the decision is made, we’ll be rolling that out across the agency so basically everyone has access to a document management system, whereas previously TRIM has been restricted to mainstream administrative areas and say some major police stations.

“Now it will be available to basically everyone so they’ll be able to access it all through that web service. That’s a large move for us in terms of where we’ve been with document management.”

A UNIX-based document tracking system is one of 65 internally developed applications used for policing and SES information management. These also include a charging system, evidence tracking and court file tracking, etc.

Over the next five years some of these applications will be rewritten using the open source Grails programming language with the eventual aim to reduce the number of applications and have them all operating under a common programming language.

“This will bring us to a level that’s going to be commensurate with policing agencies around the world, the whole of Tasmanian government and a level of technology commensurate with the Australian government as well,” said Lawler.

“We’re bringing those into one consolidated platform with one consolidated backend so  we’ve got a centralised administration and lower cost of ownership by cutting down on power use overall with a reduced number of servers.

“Once it’s completed we will have a complete centralised repository for all our documents and information handling with defined workflows according to requirements.”

At the moment the majority of information used to prosecute criminals is stored in databases associated with separate Unix applications and Lotus Notes systems. TRIM is employed as an enterprise document management system that is mainly used to store correspondence such as Ministerials and briefing notes.

All documents that need to be stored in TRIM, which aren’t in an electronic format already, are scanned manually at a central records management location. Most documents are electronically recorded in the first instance, including prosecution files, and the steps are being taken to streamline and improve the electronic management of information across other areas.

Business project management is crucial in developing the new range of applications and hardware rollout and a variety of software is used for this including Microsoft Project and OmniPlan, depending on the user’s preference.

“Before developing the new modules we are documenting all our business processes to ensure the modules we develop are sustainable, reusable, and they integrate well,” said Lawler.

“We want to ensure that we’ve got those best businesses processes in place before we actually overlay any systems on top of it.”

As part of the IT15 program, $A1.1 million will be spent fitting the state's police vehicles with GPS tracking devices to boost officer safety and improve incident responses.

Former Police Minister Jim Cox said "This technology will have massive benefits for increasing the safety of front-line police, with information on the exact location of the vehicles fitted with the devices displayed in real-time on a computer screen in Police Dispatch," Cox said in a statement. "In a critical or dangerous incident, Police Dispatch will know instantly and accurately where a police vehicle is located."

The new unified IT platform will also incorporate geospatial mapping modules so the Agency can track police vehicles.

The GPS fitted vehicles assist greatly in resource management and increasing operational safety for police in the field.  Personal non-phone integrated trackers are also being trialled for officer’s walking the beat.  As well as providing resource management functionality, installing the GPS units meant fitting vehicles with data capabilities, enabling the installation of mobile computing devices which could be connected to the organisation’s servers via a secure APN.

iPhone information access

Police are trialling prototype applications to using iPhones to access police information systems.  These officers are primarily working in the area of marine enforcement.  Having an iPhone connected to operational information databases is invaluable to officers performing duties in remote locations.

Eventually these will provide access to TRIM via a Web client, whereas at the moment officers must wait until they return to the station to their desktop PCs to access police records. There are 100 police cars already fitted with Windows CE devices that are able to access the Tasmania Police intranet site via NextG.

“At the moment the full integration isn’t there so we actually have to create a Windows CE-based interface for every application that officers need to access in the field, and wouldn’t want to do that with TRIM so that’s why we’re moving down the track with TRIM7 and browser access to unified applications,” said Lawler.

Imagery such as criminal photos and forensic evidence is currently held on two separate Unix asset management systems that are able to be accessed from desktop PCs. One of the aims of the IT15 program is to integrate these into a unified application that will allow officers to access the imagery from mobile devices.

“In a couple of years they’ll be able to do that automatically pretty much from any device they have as they require them,” said Lawler.
“That’s where we’re heading. At the moment they can access a degree of that information so they can do that through a couple of other different systems that we’ve got but what we want to do is basically integrate everything so we bring it into one logical system in a viewable format that makes it easy for them to use.”

“In the second generation we’re very much looking at that single integration, a single unit that can be put in and pulled out of the vehicle so you’ve got access to all your policing applications, access to your data and all of that will be undertaken through apps that actually live within the mobile device itself so you can jump into your motor registry system or you can jump into your police cost management system or something like that so that’s where we want to move.”

Tracking of evidence and court files is currently managed by a system built in Lotus Notes that will be phased out and replaced with a Web-based system developed in GRAILS, while the Agency has also moved to Exchange 2010 and Active Directory 2008.

It is also pilot testing Apple Mac devices for the desktop and Microsoft 2008 for Mac is one of the productivity suites currently being trialled as part of this program.

SharePoint is not part of the planning.

“We get a lot of collaboration services with the Apple environment and other benefits such as podcast production which is good for training, and we get all the server operating systems for a lower total cost of ownership than we would have to do with a Microsoft product,” said Lawler.

“We can have SharePoint if we wanted to, there’s nothing preventing us from doing that but not at this stage. We’ve got too much else on our plate with the 18 other projects we’ve taken on”

Police data goes mobile

Tasmania’s Police and Emergency Services are being equipped with in-field data capability, GPS tracking of police resources, and mobile computing solutions.

This has involved the introduction of GPS or Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) enabled police vehicles. 

AVL is used by police services all over the world to display resources on a mapping client which is primarily used by radio dispatch operators when handling incidents.  It is also used for the management of major incidents, allowing optimum benefits to be gained in terms of emergency response. 
The maps which are used by the agency can have any number of layers added including topography, satellite images, live weather radar images and even infrastructure such as gas and power lines.  This all adds up to a more informed approach to incident management.

Strategies are being introduced to reduce the amount of time officers spend conveying information over the radio.  Provision has been made for officers to ‘book’ themselves on and off duty from their desktop computers and also from the vehicles. 

The GPS units can also detect the proximity of live jobs and locations and task the vehicle accordingly on the radio operator’s screen.  The in-car devices, known as Mobile Data Terminals, are fixed in vehicles and enable access to operational information and allow officers to complete some paperwork in the field and book on and off duty.  They also provide a duress alarm function that can be activated when urgent backup is required but that information may not be able to be provided over the radio.