When the Police hear the words Infomation Technology and data exchange, they immediately reach for a dictionary.
We only really have one computer system that ALL police officers can use and that’s the PNC…
The PNC is 40-years old… That is pre-Cambrian computing…
We STILL don’t have a national intelligence system… If I need to pass on intel to the neighbouring forces I have to ring them up… Same if they want to tell us…
Crime recording systems are poor… And we have to write out manually crime reports instead of inputting them via computer.
The vast majority of us have no mobile data access… This is shameful as it has the potential to reduce workloads dramatically…
We STILL rely on computer systems that DON’T communicate with each other…
Most of our systems are difficult to use, poorly designed and expensive.
I have to remember passwords for the following systems:
Pnc; command and control; intel; crimes; property; network; email; custody; missing persons; duties; elect file system for court; global intel and hort2…
These passwords rotate on a thirty day basis so… You are changing them quite often independantly too so, if you are not careful you can be barred…
So, people use ONE password for all systems-kinda defeats the object eh?
I went on a course at work once and heard trainer say that it could take 20-mins for a free text search. When he asked if we had any questions I said, “yes, how does google manage to do free text search 10-billion pages in a couple of milli-seconds?”…
No answers… I know.., google invests money in IT solutions designed by experts…
We don’t…
It’s a disgrace… If we spent as much on some decent IT kit as we spend on bull like diversity champions … We would have the best kit in the world.
Shijuro (nearer Go-juro though...) is not georgedixon's relatively honest Blog 
Insane, absolutely insane.
Having a single password is not a problem – a well implemented single sign on point would probably make sense. Having the same password on various systems, all which have to be managed separately and which might vary in their own security levels is a problem. I sort out stuff like this all the time. My rates are very reasonable *!
And of course, Google are free to innovate. If users don’t like what google does, they have to lump it. I’ll bet the whole government bureaucracy imposes all manner of backwards compatibility issues on your PNC ( with the emphasis on “backward”).
I am afraid the Police will never have a decent IT stragedy while I have a hole in my arse…
Simply because they don’t know what they are doing and in the country of the blind-the one eyed man is king…
Well, Google aren’t running their database on a 32-bit Windows server…
Unfortunately I can imagine the problems if the government decided to go for a new Police IT system. The usual suspects (NHS system, HMRC system inter alia) would quote gazillions, get the commission to implement it, there would be no input from Police Officers as to what was actually wanted/needed, (there is no way that the ACPO brigasde could be sensibly described as “Police Officers”), there would be a budgetary over-run of some 800% at least and it would be fourteen years late in implementation.
Oh, and it wouldn’t work even then.
Trust me, I’m an IT person and if I weren’t paying for all this waste, I would be rolling around in laughter.