Questions are being asked about how prepared police forces are for the influx of 20,000 new officers. Logistical challenges aside (many stations reportedly don’t have enough lockers for example), there is a bigger question to ask - how do you ensure that a frontline police force with such a diverse range of generations can work together effectively? And is it possible for mobile technology to introduce one way of working that removes the digital divide between the generations?
The majority of new recruits are expected to of the “post millennial” or “Generation Z” generation (those born after the mid 1990s), however the bulk of their colleagues will be from the earlier generations – Generations X and Y. Naturally, the IT skillsets of these generations differs widely. This introduces a digital divide where new technologies are often not embraced uniformly across the whole of the frontline.
The only way to remove this generational divide is for the tools offered to the frontline to be as intuitive as possible. We have heard many stories from senior officers who are frustrated and embarrassed to ask their younger colleagues for ad hoc training on the latest piece of tech they’ve been handed down. Tablets and smartphones are famed for their ease-of-use – with anyone from the age of 3 being able to operate them proficiently without any training. Frontline police IT should be the same. With a common working platform that can be deployed on any mobile and non-mobile device, police officers of every generation will never be held back by a lack of IT literacy again.
PoliceBox, by Coeus Software, is one such mobile working platform which aims to eliminate the digital divide and empower the frontline once and for all. PoliceBox enables officers to complete tasks from within one, intuitive app on whichever police device they use (whether that be a smartphone, tablet or PC). It does not require any specific training, since all tasks are completed in the same way. If you can use a smartphone, you can conduct your day in PoliceBox. Despite being a relatively new solution, Avon & Somerset, Sussex and Surrey police forces are already using it.