Former detective superintendent John Gillon worked for 30 years in the Scottish police force, specialising in intelligence, cyber crime and information systems.
Mr Gillon now works with Memex Technology, a security consultancy firm. He was in Canberra this week to help its parent company, the SAS Institute, set up a public security centre in the Asia-Pacific.
Mr Gillon's research focuses largely on the way in which police officers record crimes on internal police information systems.
Those studies have shown that, since the mid-1990s, the process of creating crime reports had become increasingly onerous.
Mr Gillon said that for any single incident, a police officer was typically forced to enter reports in a range of separate records systems, including a crime reporting system, custodial records and a sex offenders register.
''[In] a piece of analysis that I did ... a simple domestic violence incident, an officer was required to input a free text explanation of what had happened into 11 different systems,'' Mr Gillon said.
''It means it can be an incredible burden, so it screams out for a more holistic approach.
''We also looked at the amount of time it took officers to input intelligence ... and it will surprise you to know that, in a very, very simple scenario, it took officers over four hours to input that information.''
He said by streamlining an officer's reporting requirements, and by creating a single, seamless police information system, forces would also greatly improve their ability to analyse intelligence.
Such a system, he said, would help intelligence analysts make connections between different crimes.
''They've all got this burden of disconnect between these key systems,'' Mr Gillon said.
''Ideally, you want to put information in once and once only, and carry that information forward,'' he said.
Source:- http://www.canberratimes.com.au