Modern information systems provide police management with informa- tion about operations. ICT enables access to predefined sources and types of information. Because of the predefined nature of police systems, such systems also contribute to filtration of knowledge in the organization.
Holgersson et al. [19] explored how an information technology sys- tem might contribute to the filtration of knowledge in an organization. Filtration has an impact on the quality of decision-making and analysis, especially when information from an IT system plays a central role when compared to other sources of knowledge. The paper describes some of the consequences in an organization when knowledge filtrated by an IT system is used for decision-making and analysis. Results from street-level policing in Sweden are discussed in the article.
Individuals in an organization can interpret and describe conditions differently. Descriptions often vary between different groups of actors. In a
by the same actors. If the organization grows in size, it will be natural with a specialization. For example, there may be one or more persons working only with IT related matters.
Accordingly, the risks are obvious that separate groups interpret the organization, its goals and problems differently. The probability of such
diversity in views will likely increase as the organization grows older. In a new organization, which has grown, there is a possibility that actors in different positions have been involved with most of the tasks before there
was a specialization. The conditions will therefore be better in terms of different groups of actors having a similar understanding.
Information technology has received a more central and critical role in the distribution of information. It is important to see an information system in a communicative perspective. The information system might be viewed as a social agent that can be both a sender and a receiver of information. Therefore, an information system has a central role to play in terms of quality of the communication between the sender and the person who tries to interpret the information.
Output from an IT system causes often a precise and reliable impres- sion, and it is often easier to acquire information from an IT system than to collect knowledge about an activity in other ways. These are two reasons why IT systems relatively one-sided are used to decide the outcome from a work process.
An example may illustrate our point. Organized pocket thefts in the city of Oslo were/are a problem. While 40% of the cases were solved in 2002, only 20% were solved in 2007. This is the kind of information police executives receive from the computer system. Based on this information, the attorney general concluded that police work has deteriorated. Top man- agement in Norwegian police agreed.
At the same time, patrolling police officers find that the situation has
improved. While there were 5000 pocket thefts in 2002, there were only 2000 in 2007. Hence, the number of unsolved cases dropt from 3000 (60% of 5000) to 1600 (80% of 2000). Street-level officers perceive that the situ-
ation has improved, and they are satisfied with their own work.
Patrolling officers had analyzed pocket theft patterns and found that
the University Street in Oslo had particularly many thefts. They had vis- ited restaurants and bars in that street and encouraged owners to install wardrobe and other measures to improve safety. Because of this kind of problem-oriented policing (POP), the number of pocket thefts dropped.
This kind of information never reached the executive level of Norwe- gian police. Instead, police executives perceived the situation even worse than just the drop into half from 40% to 20%. Because police officers
70 Knowledge Management in Policing Stage 1 Officer-to-technology End-user-tools Stage 2 Officer-to-officer Who-knows-what Stage 3 Officer-to-information What-they-know Stage 4 Officer-to-application How-they-think
Use of IT tools that provide personal efficiency, e.g., word-processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, etc.
Use of IT to find other knowledge workers, e.g., intranets, yellow-pages systems, emails, staff profiling, etc.
Use of IT to provide access to stored documents, e.g., databases, contracts, articles, photographs, reports, etc.
Use of a specific IT system designed to solve a knowledge problem, e.g., expert system, business/criminal-security intelligence, etc.
Time (years)
Level of IT-supported kno
wledge m
anagem
ent
in law enforcem
ent
Figure3.1. The knowledge management systems stage model for police intelligence.
had taken off their uniforms to analyze crime patterns in the office, to
identify hot spots, Oslo newspapers started to write about the lack of visible officers in the street. As executivesare generally very worried about news
in media, executives started to question why local police stations did not order officers back into the street. The message of declining crime because
of POP never reached the executive floor, because such information was filtered away in ICT based reporting systems.