Software

Social Media Mobile Applications for Police Forces

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"Our free application shows information about local neighbourhood policing activities mapped in relation to crimes with richer mobile online access to local officers, and an ability to have a say in what is important locally."...
  • Increase online community engagement
  • Improve transparency about policing activity
  • Access information about local officers
  • Set crimes in context with outcomes
  • A way for the busy public to tell police their views
  • Open, integrated with Social Networks on phones

For Police Officers

  • Police officers give quick geographically coded real time updates on what they are doing, without wasting time and increasing public confidence in policing through openness.
  • These updates are useful to the officers in providing examples of local engagement for performance reviews
  • Officers can't wrongly tweet, overcoming an inhibitor to the adoption of raw social media tools
  • Responses are collected in the same place as tasking activity is carried out, joining the dots between communications, tasking and outcomes.
  • The public like engaging with the police especially uniformed officers that work their local streets.

For the public

  • People using social networks can see these 'nearby' updates - they dont need a special app just a web browser or a suitable mobile phone
  • If they do choose to download the free app to their mobile phone they get the ability to:
    • see who their local officers are and easily contact them,
    • influence neighbourhood priorities by rating them
    • see upcoming neighbourhood policing events
    • see the policing interventions nearby graphically presented on a map
    • see nearby crime information in context with interventions

For the force

  • The application can be branded or sponsored for the police force customer, and additional modules are available.
  • The cost of this kind of engagement and communication is much less than traditional communications
  • Most police forces have a wealth of content on their website. The app, and tasking responses can direct public to the right location using links
  • Senior officers can define the allowable updates, and which officers are able to engage with social media Maintains professionalism, tone of voice, and provides governance.

 

 

Social Media Mobile app for the Police

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Social Media Mobile applications for the Police

Police officers around the UK are starting to use Twitter and other social networks as a means to engage with more of the public.

Social media is massive. In January 2011 it accounted for 12.4% of UK Internet site visits according to Experian. Of course that still means that many people do not use or want to use Twitter so they will not see those police messages.

Multizone Limited has come up with the answer. The explosion in mobile phone Internet access in the UK has already changed the way that most people communicate. iPhone, Blackberry & Android phone owners are happy downloading apps which provide them with local, timely, online information and entertainment.

Multizone provides Neighbourhood officers with a special police only app for their mobile phones that at the touch of a couple of buttons sends out tweets that inform their local community of what they are doing on their behalf. Officers on the street do not want to have the extra burden of having to type messages on a phone keyboard on the street. They have better things to do. Touching a couple of buttons to tell the public what type of incident they are dealing with is so much easier on the patrol.

 

SiteCode

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Open Source lightweight php based content management system for designers and developers

SiteCode provides developers a means to rapidly develop sites. Offering the client a WYSIWYG editor for pages. Edit Meta Tags & upload images. Working on Page version Control. Template based. twitter: @sitecode

More about SiteCode

SiteCode Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/sitecode/

   

twiCal

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Open Source Calendar to Twitter library

twiCal is a simple, open source driven calendar-to-twitter web service. It allows you to upload, add, mute, delete, edit and tweet your personal calendar events.

More about twiCal

twiCal Website http://twical.net

 

OAuth

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An Open Source OAuth library

OAuth is an authentication protocol that allows users (for example Twitter users) to approve applications to act on their behalf without sharing their password. More information can be found at oauth.net

In building our applications we forked an existing OAuth project and made it work with the latest (May 2011) OAuth implementation from Twitter. We use this in our iOS and Android applications.

https://github.com/stereoket/oauth-adapter

More about OAuth

Twitter developer OAuth FAQ http://dev.twitter.com/pages/oauth_faq

   

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