E-policing project: From next month, brace for tech savvy police
All police stations across Karachi have been networked to register cases on computers.
KARACHI:
The Karachi police are all set to go tech savvy. Soon head mohrars at all police stations will be sitting at computers and the cases will be registered digitally.
All police stations across Karachi have been networked to register cases on a centralised computer system. Before Eidul Azha, the policemen will start learning the basics of data entry to get going with the e-policing project.
Registration of computerised FIRs is only the initial stage of the Rs940-million project which got the go ahead in 2008 aimed at streamlining a number of in-house tasks of the police department, including documentation and computerisation of its entire organisational process and records.
E-policing includes setting up traffic management services, rescue call centres, video conferencing system, software development and prison department’s automation. For swift access to the criminal database, the project also envisages linking the courts with police stations.
“The networking stage at the police stations is complete,” said Tabassum Abid, who heads the Sindh police’s information technology department, told The Express Tribune. “Very soon, the Karachi police will officially start registering computerised FIRs.”
Gradually more and more police stations from the rural areas will be brought into the system and finally all police stations across Sindh will be interlinked with the central database server set up at the Central Police Office in Karachi.
After the networking stage, the next step is to hold training courses for the data entry operators at all the police stations in the city. “Hopefully, the training courses will start officially before Eid,” Abid said.
Karachi has 107 police stations and two personnel from each of them have been nominated for training. Around 250 data entry operators will be trained to register computerised FIRs at their respective police stations. There will also be some “master trainers” to educate the newcomers on e-policing. The software would have the option to register FIRs both in English and Urdu languages and the use of registers would be done away with.
While some finer details of the training programme still need to be sorted out, it has been decided that the policemen will initially be trained in three shifts in batches of about 25 officers.
“We still have to decide how much training the officers need. After the classes start, only then we’ll know for how many days the sessions will continue,” said the police IT department head. “We hope to complete the training programme by the next month.”
All district and divisional SSPs have been directed to ensure availability of FIR registration forms in the drop boxes placed outside their offices. The form is also available on the Sindh police website
Adil Murtaza, a data entry operator at the Artillery Maidan police station, told The Express Tribune that he has already done a short training course in data entry and was waiting for the proper training programme. “In the short course, we were only told about the basics,” he said. “We have to see how things go in the next training session. Hopefully, I will be able to learn many new things.”
“From the last year, we have been entering the data of all registered cases in computers on our own,” claimed another data entry operator posted at a district south police station. “But we were concerned if someday the computer crashed, our whole effort will go to waste, as we did not have a backup system. The central database has taken care of that issue as well.”
At the Kharadar police station, the data entry operator welcomed the e-policing initiative, saying the computerised FIRs will ease the workload considerably. “This will save time as we have to go through piles of old registers to find an old case,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2012.
The Karachi police are all set to go tech savvy. Soon head mohrars at all police stations will be sitting at computers and the cases will be registered digitally.
All police stations across Karachi have been networked to register cases on a centralised computer system. Before Eidul Azha, the policemen will start learning the basics of data entry to get going with the e-policing project.
Registration of computerised FIRs is only the initial stage of the Rs940-million project which got the go ahead in 2008 aimed at streamlining a number of in-house tasks of the police department, including documentation and computerisation of its entire organisational process and records.
E-policing includes setting up traffic management services, rescue call centres, video conferencing system, software development and prison department’s automation. For swift access to the criminal database, the project also envisages linking the courts with police stations.
“The networking stage at the police stations is complete,” said Tabassum Abid, who heads the Sindh police’s information technology department, told The Express Tribune. “Very soon, the Karachi police will officially start registering computerised FIRs.”
Gradually more and more police stations from the rural areas will be brought into the system and finally all police stations across Sindh will be interlinked with the central database server set up at the Central Police Office in Karachi.
After the networking stage, the next step is to hold training courses for the data entry operators at all the police stations in the city. “Hopefully, the training courses will start officially before Eid,” Abid said.
Karachi has 107 police stations and two personnel from each of them have been nominated for training. Around 250 data entry operators will be trained to register computerised FIRs at their respective police stations. There will also be some “master trainers” to educate the newcomers on e-policing. The software would have the option to register FIRs both in English and Urdu languages and the use of registers would be done away with.
While some finer details of the training programme still need to be sorted out, it has been decided that the policemen will initially be trained in three shifts in batches of about 25 officers.
“We still have to decide how much training the officers need. After the classes start, only then we’ll know for how many days the sessions will continue,” said the police IT department head. “We hope to complete the training programme by the next month.”
All district and divisional SSPs have been directed to ensure availability of FIR registration forms in the drop boxes placed outside their offices. The form is also available on the Sindh police website
Adil Murtaza, a data entry operator at the Artillery Maidan police station, told The Express Tribune that he has already done a short training course in data entry and was waiting for the proper training programme. “In the short course, we were only told about the basics,” he said. “We have to see how things go in the next training session. Hopefully, I will be able to learn many new things.”
“From the last year, we have been entering the data of all registered cases in computers on our own,” claimed another data entry operator posted at a district south police station. “But we were concerned if someday the computer crashed, our whole effort will go to waste, as we did not have a backup system. The central database has taken care of that issue as well.”
At the Kharadar police station, the data entry operator welcomed the e-policing initiative, saying the computerised FIRs will ease the workload considerably. “This will save time as we have to go through piles of old registers to find an old case,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2012.