@Multizone

Patchy and uneven adoption

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the attitudes in different constabularies (and other public services) to the use of real time social network tools has varied from outright opposition from some senior officers to positive engagement by others.

There is a growing body of evidence to provide greater clarity on this matter. The most recent list of current policing ‘Twitterers’ can be found via the Twitter page of Nick Keane from the NPIA’. There are two lists, one which lists ‘Police Forces who tweet’ and the other listing individual, or small groups of police staff. The former shows that only 18 Police Forces have informed the NPIA Twitterers of their Twittering presence – this does suggest that about half of the forces are at best ‘disinterested’ in Twittering and its implications.

The other list presents 93 Twitterers actively interested from this policing community – of which 84 can be identified in terms of the force of which they are part. Multizone have analysed this list to see if there are any discernible patterns – in terms of geography or rank. 28.5% of all Twitterers are from the West Midlands Force – which is perhaps not surprising as their ACC is the ACPO lead on this matter. Two other forces who also appear active are Sussex (13%) and Leicestershire (12%), the remaining 43% are divided between the other 15 Police Forces on the list. Clearly this does indicate a very patchy and uneven use of Real Time Social Network tools in England.

Analysis

Our analysis of ‘Twitterers’ by rank or role, is very interesting. It is not possible to identify by rank 10 out of the 93 Twitterers who have informed NPIA of their interest. The breakdown of the remaining 83 is shown in the following chart.

The encouraging feature of the data, is that it does confirm that interest in and presumable awareness of the use of real time social network tools is at all levels in the service. It is not restricted to a few ’Nerds’ with particular/functional interests in this matter.

Clearly, the use of such tools as Twitter and Facebook is still at an early stage, and hitherto has been mainly used to improve the communication of the force with the community. However, the use of such technology in other fields of commerce and Public Services clearly indicate its potential for use in a much wider range of policing tasks in the future. The reality is that it is here and will not go away. Furthermore it does ‘go with the grain’ in terms of the Policing Agenda over the next few years – namely – Doing more for less and fitting in with the new governments overall strategy to better engage the Community with policing services.

It is to be hoped, that NPIA (or its successor) will continue to play a supportive roll in the development of Real Time Social Network Tools and the use by Policing forces to contribute to the enhancement of the feeling of Community Wellbeing – a key objective in the “Big Society”

James E Smith OBE

Multizone