Future trends for Policing End User Computing

Throughout the pandemic all Police Forces rushed to buy laptops to facilitate remote or agile working for almost all policing support staff and some investigation and detective staff. This included expediting the delivery of laptops to their frontline officers. This coincided with the rollout and deployment of the National Enabling Programme and the move to Microsoft O365 and a Windows 10 deployment for all End User Computing (EUC). These changes have significantly advanced the digital transformation of UK Policing and the adoption of Teams, Outlook and SharePoint to support collaborative working.

As Police Forces now focus on a post pandemic environment where greater agility and easier access of data will be continue to be a priority for future technology programmes the following trends have been identified.

• Multi device strategies.
• Thin and mobile devices for edge computing.
• Powered Applications and cloud computing.
• Ruggedised devices.
• High performance compute and virtualisation for forensic sciences.
• Maximising ROI from IT assets

Multi Device Strategies

The drive to increase Policing presence in the community and the pandemic forcing remote working has meant that Forces now need to review the options on all EUC devices. This problem has been further compounded with the constraints in the IT supply chain that has meant that Forces are unable to pick and choose devices based purely on specification and are having to review alternative options balancing operational requirements and availability. Taking a long term programmatic and strategic approach to device selection, and maximising the investment in technology roadmaps will maximise individual Force’s return on their investment in the future but immediate operational requirements will ultimately have to take priority while we navigate the current situation. ?

Modern Policing is a multi-discipline organisation with several different teams, specialisms and requirements which means that a multi-device approach further supports the organisational and teams needs rather than a generic one size fits all methodology. This means that often Police Forces are required to review multiple devices and specifications to meet the wider organisational requirements, this can complicate and increase the IT management burden as the number of devices increases, so does the number of management portals, images and patches that need to maintained and deployed. Utilising staging and delivery partners, as well as modern management tools, such as Auto Pilot and Intune can help to reduce this internal burden. Other device and application utilisation monitoring and optimisation tools can be utilised to monitor and improve the overall IT estate without the need for over specify devices.

While a multi device approach can increase total costs and ongoing management resources, these need to be balanced with the operational requirements of what is a critical and complex organisation.

Thin and Mobile Devices

The most significant technological advancement in the last decade is in the mobile compute space, most notably smart phones. Smart phones and enterprise applications and now the life blood of most modern mobile organisations. The utilisation of O365 and communication applications such as Outlook, Teams and BBME having further increased the utilisation of mobile phones. The portability of the device, along with the power of the applications and cloud computing now means that the smart phone is quickly becoming the most utilised devices in frontline policing.

The latest advancements in this space has been the development of the mobile desktop environments where you can connect your mobile phone to a USB-C dock or lapdock and desktop form factor can provide increased functionality to applications and users, whilst the power off a cloud or remote desktop can give you the full performance of a full Windows device.

The best know solution in this area is Samsung Dex, however other solutions from Motorola and most notably Zebra Technologies are quickly innovating and are competing equally with Dex in terms of functionality and capability. The challenge will continue to be the development of the Android and Mobile desktop applications that will move the workloads to the connective applications and reduce the requirement for a full windows application.

Investment in DevOps and bespoke applications based on APIs will highly likely be growth areas for both the Police Forces, but also for the Private sector who can create and develop these applications in partnership with the Forces who utilises them.

As Android and Policing specific applications become more powerful, relevant and utilised over the next 10 years, the investment in mobile devices and the ecosystems that support them will become the most significant decision in the Policing EUC space in the next 10 years.

Power Applications and Cloud Computing

Police Digital Services, Microsoft and several private organisations are rapidly developing Police specific applications for both Windows and Android. These applications are focused on improving efficiency in police processes, especially in the gathering and management of evidence and processing data and checking national databases and identities. As these applications become more capable and broadly implemented, the requirement for officers to return to a station to complete paperwork and process evidence will be significantly reduced.

Some of these applications are focus on ensuring PACE compliance as well as collating victim information and statements; dictation technologies and voice recognition applications will significantly reduce the time taken to take a formal written statement. ?

Where more powerful and windows powered applications are required these will be can be assessed securely through either a virtualised desktop or remote desktop application such as Citrix Workspace and Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop. These can be secured with zero-trust solutions from the likes of ZScaler and Blackberry. These solutions can help to provide a cloud or SaaS like interaction to on premise applications and resources. The ability to use secure cloud, both public and private, as well as on and off prem solutions can significantly improve the performance of a remote device, which no longer needs to complete the computational workloads and thus acts as a thin client.

Cloud and remote access solutions are inherently reliant on a stable and reliable internet and such these solutions are not always suitable for critical remote workloads where on device applications can better support policing activity while awaiting faster, more reliable, ?data connections.

While we are still several years away from a reliable 4G/5G connection across the entirety of the country to enable these solutions, Police Forces can start to leverage these technologies in the urban environment and heavy populated areas, where front line policing conduct the majority of their policing activities.

Ruggedised devices

While traditional computing devices can offer a cost effective solution for the majority of the Policing Staff and ruggedised devices have been limited to only specialist roles, ruggedised devices could see an increase in wider adoption as Police Forces look to maximise the return of investment from devices. Ruggedised devices typically come with a longer support life and security updates, as well as interchangeable batteries and protective casing and screens, which means they are less susceptible to failure and accidental damage.

By utilising devices with longer support life cycles and with exchangeable batteries you can make devices last longer. While this can reduce costs in the long run, only needing to buy one device instead of two or three, ruggedised devices can also significantly reduce the hidden costs in managing the deployment of a technology refresh.

Often large technology refresh programmes can take over 12 months to complete, from the point of pre-tender administration, through to final delivery of devices. These long project cycles use up significant manpower, which could be allocated to other system optimisation and improvement projects. By utilising ruggedised devices for your front line officers and field staff, you can reduce the technology refresh programmes to only a limited amount of support staff.

High performance compute and virtualisation for forensic sciences

Digital Forensic workloads and analysis tools are constantly increasing in capability, complexity and file size, this means that large amounts of data require large computational workloads to analyse and asset the digital evidence. These analysis tasks are traditionally conducted on an endpoint device at point of ingestion and then moved to a storage array on a secure, separate network, and then called on and off the storage when examination is required. This constantly moving of large data files between a storage array and a endpoint device can be slow and timely, as network bandwidth becomes limited, especially as the number of investigators and analysts increases.

One of the methods to overcome this is to use a virtualised environment to run the analysis tools in. In this virtualised environment images and toolsets can be operated in secure double containerised machines to prevent sides ways migration of data. By running the imagines in the datacentre you can complete the analysis on devices where the data is stored and using datacentre grade networking switches with >25GBps transfer rates. Speeding up digital data analysis.

This is one of the use cases for utilising a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) approach, for the virtualised analysis machines. These can be paired with traditional disk storage libraries for the legal storage requirements of evidence, depending on the MOPI rating.

Datacentre devices can provide a greater level of compute density and reliability, with extended support packages, beyond that available in the traditional desktop analysis machines, with higher grade CPU, GPU and RAM chipsets available.

Maximising ROI from IT assets

The utilisation of modern devices with the latest generation of devices and chipsets can increase the total longevity of device life cycles. Typically modern devices when launched will come with a 4-5 security patching support packages. Buy purchasing a devices model that has been available for the last 12-24 months means that the force will have already reduce the useful life cycle of devices. By keeping up to date with the latest generation of devices, while these will cost more to purchase initially, you can typically get 4-5 years use from the devices with their in life security package support. Some vendors are also offering 4-5 year warranties to support the device while in use. The latest generation of devices and chipsets are also significantly more powerful and efficient, with improved battery technology, which means that they devices remain useable for longer.

By reviewing and assessing technology lifecycles and proposed devices, ensuring that you maximise the useful life time a device, will improve the total cost of ownership over a 4-5 year period, as you wont need to change the device after 3 years.

While buying less devices can save on capital budget costs, it can also reduce the internal staff work load required to support the tendering and device rollout process, freeing up project and technical capabilities for other projects.

The eXceptional difference

XMA and I care deeply about the success of our customers, as a primarily public sector focused organisation, we want to ensure that all our customers are able to achieve their operational goals as efficiently as possible, minimising wasted time, resources and money. We approach all business cases and requirements with a no-change option included, as we accept that “just because we can, doesn’t mean we should” and recognise that any change will cost time and resources, even if it might save money. Long term goals are our number one priority. ?

While we can offer several close to the box services to support the procurement, configuration and deployment of any End User Device, are best capabilities are delivered during the pre-procurement process where we can help consult customers with taking their programmes from concept through to demonstration and approval. We can help Forces to explore, not only the devices but more importantly how the device will be used and the software and applications that will be used; after all an end user devices is only an access point.

We can support you throughout the product lifecycle, from moving to modern device management solutions, such as Autopilot and Intune, receipting, configuring, imagining and asset-tagging the devices, removing the recyclable boxes and delivering ready to use solutions with secure, reusable packaging that we can use to collect your old devices and then take away to be securely wiped, refurbished and resold, providing financial support back to the Force for the old devices.

By supporting a holistic approach to all use cases and user stories for modern digital policing, we’re able to provide greater value to our customers and propose solutions that they may not be aware of, or hadn’t initially considered. We can also help to identify and support the selection of other solutions and services that can enable and accelerate your deployment and adoption, minimising your internal friction. With this approach we can help you to identify the right ecosystem and solutions to ensure that you maximise the return from your investment; as that is precisely what Information Systems are, an Investment.

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The modern end user compute devices available to support modern policing are more varied and powerful than ever before. The form factor and device design can vary significantly. As the pressures continue to require frontline staff to maximise time in the community, smartphones and specialised applications will continue to grow and support officers in carrying out essential remote tasks. As 5G smartphones become wider adopted in Forces and the public, Virtualised and remote assess to full windows or cloud applications accessible through portable thin clients will provided a cheaper more flexible option for frontline staff.

Agile workers will continue to utilise laptops of varying specifications and use cases as a USB-C hybrid and flexible work places become ubiquitous across Police stations, offices and home working areas, enabling police staff to work from dock to dock or remotely.

Policing specific applications, both mobile and cloud, will continue to be developed and support all policing staff, moving more of the policing workloads to the datacentre, enabling greater collaboration and accuracy of data processing and storage.

Finally alternative ruggedised devices, that have longer life cycles and inherent physical protection properties will see wider adoption across forces as they can provide police forces with a greater Return Of Investment and reduce procurement and management time, freeing up internal staff capacity.?

About the Author

Bruce Daniels has over 18 years experience in delivering technical projects and programmes in the Defence and National Security Sector. Having spent 15 years in the Army leading on these projects and with experience of working closely with different UK Police Forces and emergency services on delivering operational outputs, Bruce can empathise with some of their functional challenges and understands the operational context that they have to work in.