Police Officers in Cheshire have been issued with tablets in a bid to keep officers on the streets whilst enabling them to work more efficiently.
Microsoft Surface 3 tablet have now been fully rolled out to 1,675 officers across the force at a cost of £3.4m over a three year period from 2016 to 2019. This figure includes the purchase of the tablets as well as all the staffing costs and on-going technological and security updates.
A police spokesperson said "This expenditure will deliver improved efficiency in the way officers and staff work and will also deliver cashable savings.
"The £3.4m cost will also be offset by savings in time and efficiency across the force, and will enable further efficiencies to be realised in the next 18 months.
"These efficiencies will help keep the public safe as the new tablets will maximise the time officers are able to spend in the communities across Cheshire."
The completion of the tablet roll-out is part of the Digital Policing Programme and those who have received the devices include: Response Officers, Beat Officers, CID Officers, PCSOs, Inspectors up to the Chief Constable and specialist units in HQ.
Key aims of the project are to make policing more effective and further protect the safety of communities across Cheshire.
The tablets enable officers to capture digital evidence and upload statements without having to head back to the station which helps to speed up investigations and improve the quality of evidence gathered whilst helping officers do more with their time and spend more time working out in communities.
Supt Matt Welsted, who is leading the Digital Policing Programme, said: "The roll out of Windows 10 tablets will underpin our position as an outstanding police force.
"Officers can now spend more time out on the streets whilst also doing some of the many other tasks required of them.
"The digital world is a tremendously fast-moving area, but the move to Windows 10 tablets puts us in a great place both now and in the future."
Commenting on the roll out Police & Crime Commissioner David Keane added: "The full roll out of the tablets is a positive step in ensuring we have a police service fit for the future and illustrates investment in technology that supports our officers in the community.
"The tablets will support the efficiency and effectiveness of our police service and I will be monitoring how our investment in new ways of working is allowing officers to spend more time in, and connect to our local communities."
PC Pete Cole, the Business Ambassador who has been leading the project, said: "The feedback we are getting to the tablets is hugely positive.
"There are lots of stories being fed back about how much time officers are saving and how they are able to work in different locations and gain instant access to important information right when and where they need it."
Comments
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Forget 'staffing costs' as these machines are being handed out to existing staff.
As for 'maintenance' apart from soft wear updates it's minimal.
So, please can Cheshire Police break down this price for us hard-pressed taxpayers.
It will help when it comes to paying an extra premium on the Police Precept to know how our money is spent.
At the moment it looks like a really poor deal on such a large number of units on which a serious discount would be anticipated.
Please prove me wrong.
Be good to read next year about savings and higher clear up rates. Looking forward to Mr Keane's stats, especially cybercrime.
A cost of around £2k per machine over 3 years doesn't seem bad at all. You might need to:
- Buy the machines (more than 1,675 of them as you will need spares)
- Buy all the other bits and pieces they will need like cases and adapters to charge them in the car, etc.
- Over 3 years in a "street" environment a bunch of them will get broken, lost or stolen. They will need to be replaced or fixed.
- A Cheshire Police build of these machines, set up with whatever tools they need and access to their backend systems needs to be developed, tested and rolled out to all of them. You need to pay someone to do this.
- You will probably need to licence additional software for them.
- They may well have needed to get people to write new software for them. There will then be ongoing support costs associated with this.
- You need to train 1,675 users to work with them from day 1. Let's say they get a day of training each. That's whatever a police officer costs per day multiplied by 1,675 to start with. Then you have to pay the person delivering the training. Let's say they do it in groups of 10... that would be 160 days of trainers time to pay for. Then you need to do run courses repeatedly every time new officers join the force.
- There will be mobile data costs for the machines to communicate back into the Cheshire Police network
- I can't imagine they can stick 1,675 extra machines on their network without a whole bunch of things needing to be upgraded. There's almost certainly a chunk of infrastructure and networking cost.
- You need a helpdesk for the officers to call when there are problems, staffed by people with the skills and tools to help them solve these problems. Presumably this will need to be manned 24/7.
I'm sure if I spent more than 5 minutes I could think of a loads of other overheads.
Re the police commissioner, from what I can gather, having asked about Councillor Jones's escapade, in December 2015, this has not been resolved, presumably so it will be forgotten.
I was told by the Commissioner it was nothing to do with him.
I voted for a non policeman, on the hope he would stir their lethargy, and get things moving, Some hope.
What extra % of visible police presence is expected? This should be known as part of the standard ROI business case...
But even if that wasn't true, the key part of this is that they almost certainly want them to run most of the police software they use down the station and back at HQ, which almost certainly runs on Windows already. A lot of it they've probably bought in, some possibly written bespoke for Cheshire Police. It's a lot cheaper to buy machines that are already capable or running the software you want than having to get new versions developed to run on iOS or Android.