What is the potential of emerging technologies in policing?

“On body-worn video, I’m constantly having to go to the three suppliers (we work with) and tell them to stop developing what they think we need, and having the tail wag the dog,” one panellist remarked.

“They come to us, and they say they’ve got this wonderful camera that can see in the dark and have a telescoping lens and it’ll do facial recognition. All of that’s great – but we’re not ready for that yet. What we need is what we’ve got to be really, really good.

“What I’m trying to do is to tell the suppliers where we need them to take the technology so that it actually does what we need, rather than what they think we want.”

Many of the panellists concurred with this assessment – that it is a fallacy to assume the most advanced technology available necessarily results in the most effective policing.

Others agreed that efficient, smart procurement often needs to take a nuanced approach to acquiring tech – and that the best solution isn’t necessarily the shiniest, newest one.

Another participant – my colleague, Ant Morse, Head of Innovation and Account Engagement at Virgin Media O₂ Business – framed the problem succinctly when they said: “Innovation that doesn’t solve a problem is a gadget.”

Another key theme was the difficult balancing act police forces must strike between investing in technology whilst managing limited budgets and expectations.

“We’re not blue-chip companies – we don’t have that spending power. However, the private sector delivers innovative technologies to the public – that the public then expect the police to have.”

The scale of the investment needed was demonstrated by one expert, who referred to the £90million per year outlay by UK forces on body-worn cameras alone.

“When you think of all the other tech, this is big money,” he said.

As with all public sector organisations and agencies, there are also significant budgetary constraints and considerations to make. Spending decisions carry even more weight when it is public money being spent.

This highlights the importance of finding the right partners with a proven track record to fully transition to modern ways of working.

Although there are solutions in play – as Ant Morse said, “The other point is co-creation (of tech) – bringing in the partners and developers.

“A lot of successful innovations… aren’t even evolutions, they are tweaks to products and services. This massively reduces the risk exposure to public spending. It de-risks it for the particular organisation… it spreads the risk and costs.”

Common to all organisations undergoing digital transformation is the challenge of earning buy-in from staff members and stakeholders across large organisations – particularly those which employ a broad cross-section of ages and demographic profiles.

This can be particularly challenging in public sector organisations where low-tech working is still the norm, for any number of reasons. This is certainly the case in Policing, where there are additional complexities.

One participant argued: “We need to recognise that the majority of our blue-light frontline officers who answer calls for service are relatively young and have grown up expecting tech and expecting live feeds.

“So, when they come into the organisation, they realise we’re still using pens and paper, they almost frown a little bit. That drives a lot of frustration. It can become a little bit damaging. Managing expectation from staff is one thing – managing expectation from the public is another.”

One potential solution offered by the panel was to take steps to unlock the maximum benefit from the existing tech held by police forces.

One participant said: “Innovation can also mean getting maximum benefits out of the technology police forces already have – or even using that tech in a different way to solve some of those policing problems,” another said. “That definitely helps the cultural buy-in.”