The INSPEC2T project developed a social media environment to enhance the community’s engagement with authorities for the benefit of citizens’ security and wellbeing. The solution delivered a set of tools designed to foster and promote collaboration between citizens and Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) using new technologies and modern practices. Citizens, NGOs and other Community Policing (CP) stakeholders interacted with authorities using the INSPEC2T tool. The developed platform, which is a modernized, social-media-like communication platform, enhanced the participation of citizenry in CP. Citizens were involved in a number of CP related activities ranging from incident reporting, confirming reports, providing additional information and responding to requests for intelligence. The interaction with INSPEC2T empowered communities to initially identify and implement solutions to local problems and subsequently to influence strategic CP priorities and decisions.
The project reached out to more than 2100 CP stakeholders using online surveys and focus group discussions. The project partners promoted the online surveys exclusively using social media channels and electronic communications. The surveys were conducted between 8/2015 and 1/2016.
An overview of the INSPEC2T solution and its components is illustrated in Figure 1. The police mainly use the Secure Portal to manage all incoming information. Citizens use both the Public Portal and the mobile app to submit incident reports, interact in online communities and actively help police. Citizens communicate with CP officers through chatting, calling and texting. They are alerted on warnings and critical situations. A Training Simulator has been developed to support training of police officers.
The first version of INSPEC2T was piloted in Belfast, in 4/2017. CP Officers from Police Service Northern Ireland participated in the execution of scenarios. The second pilot, took place in Egkomi, Cyprus in 5/2017. The third pilot took place in Valencia, Spain.
The interaction with end users, involved in the first testing phase, provided feedback, suggestions and recommendations to further develop and modify the solution. Following a development cycle where the solution was modified and enriched with new functionalities, two further pilots were conducted. The fourth pilot took place in Groningen, Netherlands, in 9/017 and lasted 9 weeks. In 10/2017, the system was demonstrated at the Next Generation Community Policing Conference in Greece. The fifth pilot took place in Preston, UK, in 11/2017. CP officers, involved also in the first pilot, tested the system and verified its evolution. As a result, the following functionalities were highly valued by participating stakeholders:
1.The use of a more modernised approach in how the police is contacted, using the Mobile app and /or Public Portal, as well as in the way incident reporting and management is carried out
2.The feedback provided on submitted reports status, which adds transparency to case /report handling and simultaneously elevates accountability of involved authorities
3.The organization of information in the system and the visualization of the submitted incidents status
4.The use of multimedia content in reporting (pictures, videos, speech recordings) and using a social-media-like environment; and
5.Picturing the location of an incident on a map is of great value to authorities and respondents, while participants appreciated the analytics and the safe map functions.
The submitted reports were intelligently processed in the background to assist INSPEC2T’s operators with their duties. One topic that was debated across all pilots was the processing of the submitted data and its compliance with national and EU Legal frameworks. Police officers are challenged on a daily basis with lawfulness of data provided for criminal justice purposes. The INSPEC2T solution implemented adaptable safeguards for data ageing, archiving and retention of submitted records.
