Parity Training helps Staffordshire Police bust bureaucracy
~ courses provide staff with skills to work on the move, cutting 30 minutes of admin per shift ~
Parity Training has worked with Staffordshire Police over the last 6 months to train 1,200 staff to use mobile devices, to access critical applications and submit valuable information, wherever they are. Second and third trenches of training are planned from April this year to cater for another 900 officers and police community support officers.
The training programme supports the Force’s Mobile Data Project, which aims to mobilise officers through streaming desktop-bound systems to devices such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). The Project will cut time spent on desk-based administration, as staff can complete reports remotely. Parity is administering and managing the trainers for the rollout of the system.
“While mobile devices themselves are not new, the ability to use them as interfaces to core business and policing applications is,” said Allan Pettman, managing director at Parity Training. “We are working closely with Staffordshire’s Mobile Data project team to enable the widespread and effective adoption of this new technology across the Force.”
Parity is training officers to use the devices, and the accessible software, on a 1:6 basis in an Instructor-led Training environment. Training is further supported with trouble-shooting surgeries which are based at Police Stations across the Staffordshire county.
Once trained, the bureaucracy-busting devices save officers up to 30 minutes per shift as they are able to send and receive information while on the beat.
A spokesperson at Staffordshire Police commented: “Parity's training is helping officers spend less time in the station and more on the streets.”
He added: “Officers can now carry out checks at the scene of suspected crimes by accessing applications remotely, including checking vehicle registrations and looking at the profiles of suspects. This means more effective, more immediate policing, which is good for the whole community. Officers now upload more than 80 per cent of crime reports, and update more than 50 per cent of incident details, via PDAs1. Response has been excellent from all the officers using the system. We are effectively changing the face of policing, by moving the office to the officer, rather than the other way round.”
The Staffordshire Mobile Data Project was born from a Home Office initiative, which aimed to deliver 10,000 mobile data devices to 27 forces across the country in 2008 (worth £50 million). The funding was extended further for 2009 (an additional £30 million), with the aim to rollout mobile devices to a further 25 police forces.
1 Source: Staffordshire Police Mobile Data Project: background, 2008
