Annex 6 Lothian & Borders Police: Personal Digital Assistant ( PDA) Pilot
Introduction
1. Lothian and Borders Police are currently piloting Personal Digital Assistants ( PDAs) which, in addition to storing other police documentation electronically, enables officers to handwrite witness statements on the display screen (in National Standard Statement template format).
Scope of the Pilot
2. This pilot commenced in 2005 and was initially limited to use by the entire Road Policing Branch, community patrol officers from West Edinburgh and staff from the Complaints and Conduct and Professional Standards Department.
3. As at 20 February 2007, the PDA Pilot was dealing with 255 live cases, had been used in respect of 3412 crimes reported to the Procurator fiscal and 2843 statements had been noted in the e-notebooks. 36
How the PDA works
4. Operational Lothian and Borders police officers gather information within an e-notebook at the point of contact with the public. On return to the police station, the officer will then upload the information contained within the e-notebook into a desktop. Using the PDAs as electronic notebooks enables the police officer to gather information such as crime reports, vehicular accident reports and witness statements at the point of contact with the public rather than waiting to complete this work back at the police station.
5. The officers are also issued with micro printers linked via blue tooth to the PDA device, enabling the officer to issue conditional offers, HORT/1 forms, victim of crime information sheets etc.
Training
6. All officers who are issued with PDAs are provided with 3 days training on their use. This consists of a 2 day course, with a follow-up day approximately 1 week later to address any concerns the officer might have regarding the use of the e-notebook in practice.
PDAs and Witness Statements
7. As indicated above, the PDA can be used by an officer to record witness statements. These statements can be obtained at the point of contact with the witness and then uploaded onto the desktop on return to the police station.
8. As the officer writes, each line of text is locked and the officer cannot make any amendments to it. This can be done at the locus of an incident or at the stage the officer is first speaking to the witness. After either reading it over to the witness or allowing them to check it for accuracy, it is then signed by the witness, on the e-notebook, at the end of the statement.
9. The PDAs have been programmed to recognise individual officers' handwriting and within an office environment the handwritten statement can be transposed into a typed copy by one of two means: firstly, the officer can manually type the statement with reference to the handwritten statement or secondly, the officer can use a character recognition programme.
10. Where the character recognition programme is utilised, the officer will select this option and the programme will automatically prepare a typed version of the handwritten statement. The officer should then check the typed text for accuracy against the handwritten statement and amend any character recognition errors. The pilot has found that 80-90% of officers' handwriting is being recognised by the character recognition system.
11. Both the handwritten and typed statement are capable of being printed. These statements are stored on a central database along with other documentation relating to the incident and can be retrieved / printed (but not edited) with minimum resource or time implications for the police.
Security of the PDA system
12. The pilot has demonstrated that there are no concerns regarding the security of the information contained within the PDA. Tests have been carried out on the ability to "hack" into the system, in which attempts at "hacking" have been unsuccessful.
Future of the Pilot
13. It is anticipated that the pilot will be rolled out to all uniformed officers in Lothian and Borders police by 2009 and, thereafter, in 2010, to all CID officers as well. Other police forces, including Strathclyde Police, are also looking at adopting the use of e-notebooks within their own Forces.