Northumbria Police Select WinScribe VoiceForms Crime Reporting Software

The Central Information Bureau at Northumbria Police is staffed 7 a.m. – midnight 7 days a week but with the reporting of crimes continuing after midnight the force needed a Digital Dictation System that would allow officers to continue filing their reports at anytime ready for transcription first thing the next morning.

The Challenge - Improve Reliability and Reduce Costs

Previously police officers had to complete forms by hand which took a great deal of time delaying the officers’ return to their external duties.
Tina Watson, Central Information Bureau Manager, Criminal Justice started looking for a system to allow easier reporting, a system that would be cost efficient and above all be user friendly.

“We did look at other systems”, said Tina Watson, “but following a presentation of WinScribe VoiceForms we realized that this was the solution we were looking for. It would enable us to allocate priority reports quickly and efficiently and monitor the workflow.”

The Solution – WinScribe

Philip Vian, Managing Director, WinScribe Europe, explained “Through our years of experience working with the police service and their ever changing work practices we developed WinScribe VoiceForms especially for crime reporting. VoiceForms can be completed while at a scene or on the move, freeing officers from onerous desk-based paperwork. Officers file their voice reports by telephone or using Airwave. The VoiceForms spoken prompts and simple, context-sensitive menu system will then guide them through the incident report process.

“The installation went extremely well,” continued Tina. “VoiceForms integrated immediately with Airwave and with the Force’s internal system without any problems”.

466 officers were set up to dictate their reports to the Crime Bureau Operators working on three shifts between 7 a.m. and midnight.

The Result - Reduced Costs and User Buy-in

Pauline Davidson, one of the Bureau’s 18 operators said, “I was so impressed at how clever VoiceForms is. Sometimes all the operators are involved in phone calls from officers in the field but we had no worries of a missed report because if all the lines were busy WinScribe VoiceForms would take over and the crime report would be stored in our typing queue for transcription by the first operator who became available”.

Pauline went on to say, “Because the bureau operators work shifts and share desks, any concern we had that using VoiceForms would result in our individual preferences not being adhered to e.g. volume of dictation, speed at which we hear the dictation were soon dismissed as we are able to set individual requirements as soon as we logged on with our user ID.”

“The workflow management software has proved extremely successful especially when sickness or holidays occur. The System Administrator can simply check to see what the department or individual workload is and allocate resources as required. Even when the fire alarm went off we had no need to put a contingency plan into operation. WinScribe VoiceForms continued to operate and record the officer’s reports until we were able to return to our offices”, concluded Tina.

The success of VoiceForms has prompted other departments, including Criminal Intelligence, to expand the WinScribe VoiceForms solution.

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