Field Data Entry Alternatives

The value of having incident data completely loaded into files on a central computer system, accessible by investigators, prosecutors, crime analysis units, and police management, is that it is possible to eliminate substantial costs associated with manual record storage, processing and retrieval.  Eliminating the reliance on the paper trail not only saves time and therefore money but also decreases the likelihood of losing records and of failing to make the right decisions due to the lack of information at hand.

Most major departments have also concluded that in order to get the full benefit of fully computerized records, they must be entered within a short time (less than 8 hours) after the incident occurs, or there will still need to be a second data distribution channel built around the paper copy.  If the paper distribution channel is not eliminated, then the cost savings potential of computerized incident reports will not be achieved.

It is also clear from many prior studies that the likelihood of clearing a case by arrest decays as a function of the passage of time, so the sooner a case is entered and assigned to an investigator, the higher is the likelihood of a successful closure.  Thus, to achieve the objectives of cost reduction, data integrity, and increased apprehension rates, the rapid availability of a computer-based incident report is highly desirable in any department.

However, having reached this conclusion only raises the question of how best to enter the data into the computer system.  Agencies that have taken the approach of hiring data entry clerks to key in the information from the incident report generated in the field have commonly found that the number of clerks available is insufficient, and the lag time commonly experienced in obtaining approval for and hiring staff for this purpose is such that there always seems to be a backlog of reports that grows rather than diminishes.  Over time, it is not uncommon to experience delays on the order of weeks or months in many departments.  This kind of delay defeats the purpose of computer-based records management, since the manual tasks of copying and distributing the records must continue in the face of such backlogs.  The computer in this scenario is adding more work than it is value to the process.

This report describes the experiences of two major police departments in taking different paths to the entry of police incident reports into a centralized computer system.  The report is focused on the operational experience of the two agencies and on the costs and benefits of the alternative approaches to entering information.  Both agencies have experienced substantial benefits from the full computerization of incident reports.

In the Phoenix Police Department, a standard process of dictating reports either directly to a secretary or to a recording system has been adopted.  In the Houston Police Department, direct entry of incident information is accomplished by individual officers using laptop computers.  Both departments are extremely satisfied with the approach they have taken, a point that should be remembered in evaluating these alternative data entry mechanisms. 

This report will attempt to describe the experience of both agencies and compare the results as far as is possible.  It should be noted at the outset that there is little hard statistical data available at either department to back up the observations and opinions of the participants.

Report Entry By Dictation--the Phoenix Experience

The general approach in Phoenix, mandated by standard operating procedure, is that officers will dictate reports whenever possible.  The officers are connected directly to a secretary as the preferred mode, and to a recording system in overload conditions.  The secretary keys the information into the mainframe incident system, so that the data is available on line as quickly as possible.  The following paragraphs describe the various aspects of this experience.

Environment

Phoenix has a population of 1,049,000, and covers 448 square miles..  The Police Department has 2,010 sworn officers and is planning to add 228.  There are 638 non-sworn personnel.  The department is divided into 6 precincts.  Community based policing is a priority for the department.  The department handles 1.5 million calls for service per year, which result in 750,000 events.  In 1993, 649,167 calls for service resulted in a dispatch of a unit, and 88,973 calls were handled by the call-back (Teleserv) unit. Incident reports amount to about 650 original reports and 550 supplements per average day.

The Phoenix PD developed a system known as PACE that calls for the complete entry of all incident information, including narrative, into the central computer.  The computer is a Unisys A16 machine, and currently uses about 13 gigabytes of storage.  The software has been self-developed, with a team of 10 people who have been programming the system for several years.

Operations

Following the determination that a report is to be written and the assignment of a Departmental Report (DR) Number, the field officer takes appropriate notes during the investigation of the call.  If the call is a higher priority call, the officer is required to find a phone and dictate the report immediately.  Certain low priority calls still result in the submission of a hand-written incident report. The officer gives the victim the DR number on a form to allow the victim to call with more information or to discuss the case with the investigator as appropriate.

When the officer calls the dictation line, every effort is made to have a secretary available to take the dictation in order to resolve any ambiguities as the report is being entered into the system.  The secretary follows the officer’s dictation, filling in blanks on a screen that creates a temporary file to capture the data without causing a delay in the transcription.  It was estimated that the duration of the average dictated call is 30 minutes. 

Following completion of the entry, the report is “finalized," causing a check of the name index to detect previously entered names and of the property and vehicles files to determine if the property or vehicles are listed in stolen records.  After the appropriate updates to the indexes, the incident data is stored in the database and is then available for immediate access by the investigators.  All incidents entered are immediately routed to the case management system, creating a queue for the appropriate investigative unit.  The incident is also printed out in the precinct of origin.

There are 59 secretaries taking incident dictation, and the department plans to hire 6 more secretaries.  There are also 7 people doing UCR classification, although 53% of the incidents are automatically classified by the computer based on the dictated information.  Prior to the implementation of this system, there were 26 people in records handling the direct entry of incident reports.  To make the dictation system work, 30 new people were hired.  The Phoenix Police Department records section contains 170 people.  These individuals are also responsible for entering FI cards, although the new MDT system currently being implemented will allow for direct entry of FI cards from the MDT.  It takes 6 weeks of training for a secretary to be proficient in entering incident data using the dictation system.

System Benefits

The Phoenix PD estimates that it saves $770,000 per year by the full computerization of incident reports due to the reduction in the costs of the manual processing that was required prior to the implementation of PACE.  Additional cost savings in lost time due to illness, mailing, driving to records to get a report, and off-site record retrieval was also identified.  A key benefit is the immediate availability of information for investigative follow-up and for providing citizen service.  The department also believes that PACE results in the quicker service of warrants.

Other stated benefits include the time saved in finding lost files, and in preparing documents for microfilming.  Phoenix believes that the dictation of a report saves the officer’s time in submitting data on incidents.

Phoenix has increased revenue by providing a quick capability to deliver incident reports to citizens and insurance companies.

Implementation Lessons Learned

Training was a difficult part of the implementation of PACE.  The department acknowledged that it made a mistake in conducting training too far ahead of system implementation, resulting in required re-training after implementation.  The order of training was also a problem, in that patrol officers were trained before their management knew what the program was about, and therefore management support was not in place prior to implementation in the field.

It has been recognized by the Phoenix Police Department that dictation is a separate skill for which training can be delivered to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the dictation process.

There is still some apprehension in the Department regarding the measures of effectiveness by which various parts of the program are judged.  The secretaries who take dictation, for example, seem to be measured by throughput above quality, although the department believes that overall incident report quality has improved with the PACE system.

Laptop Incident Entry--the Houston Experience

For three years, the Houston Police Department has been using laptop computers to allow the officers to directly enter incident reports.  Periodically during a shift, the officers bring their floppy disks to a transfer station (PC) and upload the incident information to the mainframe.  A quality control unit checks the entered data, and all data is immediately available to investigators.

Environment

Houston has a population of about 1.75 million people, and covers 700 square miles.  The Houston Police Department has 4,200 sworn officers, and is going to add 700 more by 1996.  There are 1,900 civilian employees. In 1993, there were 1,417,825 calls for service.  About 30% of the calls for service are routed to and handled by the Teleserv unit without requiring a dispatch.  The field officers generate about 900 new original incident reports per day and 1200 supplements.

Houston implemented a computerized records system in 1980.  Prior to the laptop project, all incident information, including narrative, was entered directly into the system by keying in the data from the officer’s hand-written report.  Faced with a delay in entry of 5 to 14 days, the department sought to achieve data availability in 8 hours or less using direct field entry.  Initial systems were purchased starting in 1991 after extensive field trials of different brands of computers.  Full project roll-out throughout the City was done in 1992.  The initial acquisition budget of $3.1 million was financed from funds received in asset forfeiture cases related to drug enforcement operations.  The department has now deployed 1,600 laptops.  There are also 2,200 MDT’s installed in police vehicles.

Houston wrote its own application software for the laptop incident reporting project, using BASIC to create character-based entry screens that required only standard DOS computers with minimum memory and disk space.  The software also provides a geofile look-up for address validation with a geofile resident on each laptop, and there are utility programs for searching state penal codes, local traffic ordinances, and for finding commonly used telephone numbers.  There is a limited word processing capability within the application software.  In addition, some units also have WordPerfect installed.

Houston is a highly decentralized police department, relying on substations to conduct the full range of police business in their respective geographic areas.

The Houston PD records system currently runs on a Unisys 2200/500 mainframe with a DCP 624 communications front-end.  The records system software has been developed by the HPD.  The CAD system runs on DEC equipment and was supplied by PRC.  The MDT network is based on software written by HPD. 

Operations

Field officers check out a “kit” when they come on duty that consists of a laptop, carrying case, and batteries.  The kit is returned at the end of the shift, following a process similar to that used to issue portable radios.

In Houston, the laptops are designed to be portable, and are not in any way tied to the vehicle.  As incidents occur, the officers respond and either take notes or directly use the laptop in interviewing the victims.  In many instances the officer will actually use the field choices on the screen, showing them to the victim, to obtain more detailed and accurate suspect descriptions from the victims.  In cases where no immediate potential for violence is present, and the officer can safely use the equipment to do so, the interview is simply recorded using the laptop instead of writing down notes.

For serious cases, the officer completes the report on the laptop and goes to one of the places in the city where there are 70 separate “transfer stations” consisting of PC’s configured to upload information directly into the mainframe.  For minor cases, such as those consisting of reports taken for insurance purposes, the officer waits until the end of the shift and then uploads the incident information to the mainframe.  The laptop software includes batch files that allow the officer to make a copy on his or her own disk and keep this disk for later use in connection with any required court testimony or other follow-up. 

Initial plans in Houston called for the officers to turn in their disks and for there to be a staff of people assigned to do the uploading.  Considering input from the officers, this procedure was abandoned in favor of the officers’ doing their own uploading.  They then knew the job had been completed, and took ownership of the process of getting the data up to the mainframe.

Prior to turning in the laptop kit, officers delete the incident reports they have entered and retain the floppy disk on which has been recorded the incidents they handled on that shift.  Officers use a new diskette about every three months.

Once the incident report is uploaded to the mainframe it passes through a staff review unit that operates as a quality control operation, and then the report is frozen and cannot be changed.  Only supplements can be used at this point to record changed information.  There is no connection from the incident report to a master name or other index in the Houston police records system.

Of the 126 people in central records, about 45 staff persons are assigned to the staff review function, which is responsible for the quality control function, UCR coding, validation checks.  About 85% of their work deals with quality control on the incident entry program.

HPD issues a separate laptop and software package for the Field Training Officer(FTO) functions, designed to collect data on probationary police officers going through the field training and evaluation program.  Each FTO has a laptop with which to generate daily evaluations of officers. At this point, the FTO software is simply used to generate and print the hard copy of the evaluations report, without any database transfer.  Reports are moved to floppy disk storage and are also kept on the hard disk during the evaluation process.  There are 272 FTO’s currently involved in the program.

Training of officers for the use of the laptops has been integrated into academy training.  There are computer labs at the academy, and elective courses in DOS and related topics.  All officers receive one 8 hour block of computer training in the use of the incident software.

HPD has obtained 3 year contracts for maintenance of the laptop units beyond the manufacturers’ original warranty which was one year for most units.  The cost for extending the warranty in this way has been running about $45 per year per unit.  Out of the 1300 original units, there have been about 50 screen replacements not covered under warranty (at about $1,000 per screen), and approximately another $50,000 for other out-of warranty repairs, totaling about $100,000 per year.  This figure is expected to decrease with the increased reliability of newer laptops.  The department has assigned a staff of two people to handle the repair work on units.  About 15-20 units are sent in per day to the central repair site.  Approximately 25% are fixed by the two individuals assigned, and the rest are returned to the dealer.  A total of 4 laptops have been lost since the beginning of the project.

Benefits

The HPD estimated that the project would result in saving 700 hours per day in handling incident reporting and data entry.  There has been no precise measurement of these estimated savings, but it is widely accepted as being the case.  HPD believes that the hand-written incident report in their case was taking an average of 30 minutes for the officer to complete the report, and that the use of the laptop has reduced this to 15 minutes.

The central records unit was able to eliminate about 25 positions (which constituted about a 40% reduction in the work force dedicated to this function) as a result of implementing the laptop direct entry program.  Furthermore, the data entry positions that were in the substations supporting incident and supplement entry at the substation level have not been filled as attrition occurred in these positions.  In many cases the personnel were simply re-assigned to other duties.  There is an estimated saving of 36 positions in this category.  Additionally, about 15 positions in investigative units that were previously dedicated to data entry have been re-assigned to other duties.  The total savings from the laptop implementation is about 76 positions.

The department has also experienced cost savings in the significant reduction in floor space and storage as a result of relying on the computerized version of the incident report.

One of the consequences of the direct entry program that has evolved because of the near real time entry of incident information is that Houston has been able to redefine the role and mission of crime analysis around producing quick analyses and summaries for management and operations support.  After a study of the information needs for operational response to changing field conditions, a new set of reports has been defined that give commanders a much more current picture of the events in areas for which they have responsibility.  The department has set up a pilot project where data is downloaded from the mainframe into a DataEase database that facilitates the crime analysis work of generating pattern information almost when the shift is complete.  Preliminary reactions from the field commanders indicate that this fast response time is invaluable in controlling resources in their respective sectors of the city.

Implementation lessons learned

In its experimentation with the various different issues involving the introduction of laptop computing, Houston has learned some valuable lessons that will benefit other agencies electing this form of data entry. 

Houston attributes the success of this project to the intentional use of a steering committee representing the different organizational units within the department.  The programming staff took their complete direction from this steering committee, both in the design of the screens for data entry and in the method of operation of the system.  According to the programming staff, it was the involvement of the officers through the steering committee and the individuals in the pilot test that made the system acceptable and work throughout the department as the system was implemented fully. 

The method of transferring incident data from the laptop that was finally chosen was the floppy disk transfer.  Experiments with plugging the laptop directly into a server to execute the transfer revealed problems with the physical connection--plugs and cables breaking--to the point where this experience was frustrating to the officers.

At least initially, officers were given a large degree of flexibility in the entry of incidents.  One of the undesirable consequences of this freedom was that officers tended to skip some of the optional data fields and simply type in the information in a narrative form, thus not providing some of the information that was useful for crime analysis.

The Houston PD believes that the ideal laptop would also replace the Mobile Digital Terminal units in the vehicles.  At the moment, their position is that there is no hardware on the market that would provide this level of functionality.

Evaluation of data entry options

Most police departments can justify the full computerization of incident information in a timely fashion on the basis of the reduced cost of report distribution, the increased database integrity, and the increased usefulness of the information collected.  Taking this as a premise, the remaining issue is how best to transform the data collected by the responding officer from raw notes to computerized information.  Assuming that the department has developed an enterprise repository for containing and accessing the full incident report, there are three broad approaches to data entry:

1.      Post-shift data entry, characterized by manual report writing coupled with adequate data entry personnel sufficient to enter all incidents within 8 hours following a shift

2.      Dictation, where there is minimal note taking by the officer and dictation of the incident report to either a person entering data on-line or to a recording system for subsequent entry

3.      Field direct entry using a mobile computer with uploading to the host repository and quality control done by a central records unit

The selection of one of these methods or a combination thereof will depend on the objectives of the department.  The factors that are most obvious in selecting a particular approach are: (1) the initial and on-going relative cost of the approach, (2) the relative advantages in maximizing report quality, (3) other benefits accruing from a particular choice.

Cost tradeoffs

The cost of labor is obviously the largest on-going expense of incident data collection.  To evaluate any potential relative merits of the three alternatives, it is necessary to focus on the processes for accomplishing the data transformation.  The processes involve both officer time and clerical time and can be evaluated by dividing the process into the following steps:

Officer time includes the initial note-taking during or immediately after responding to an incident, and the time spent in transforming the notes into an incident report that can be submitted in either manual form or automated form. 

Records unit time includes any time required for processing the incoming report and for actual data entry if this step has not occurred in the field. The time spent on each task will vary as a function of the data entry method and the nature of the incident being reported.  Quality control work is considered to part of the incident data entry process.

Neither Houston PD nor Phoenix PD has collected any hard data to determine the time spent in these separate processes.  The estimates that are being used have wide variations depending on the type of incident.  As a way of summarizing the opinions voiced, Houston believes that the use of the laptops cuts the report preparation time on the part of the officer down from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.  Phoenix PD believes that the average dictation time takes 30 minutes.  Prior data from St. Louis on its dictation approach indicates an average of 16 minutes for dictating reports.  San Jose PD, in a well-documented study of hand-writing vs. laptop data entry found that report preparation averages 45 minutes regardless of the methodology.  It is probably not possible to draw any conclusions from these data points given the lack of   comparability based on the types of incidents involved in these numbers.

If the note taking step is included in the analysis, the time required for both note-taking and report preparation may be equivalent under either the manual data entry alternative or under a dictation method.  It is possible that direct entry via laptops would reduce the total time in these two steps if a significant percentage of incidents were entered directly on the laptop without making any notes first. 

Given the data from the San Jose study and the first-hand observations of the people involved in Houston and Phoenix, it is probably safe to conclude that dictation or laptop entry will not increase the time spent by officers in preparing incident reports.  If this is the case, then the comparison of the three alternatives can be based on the costs of clerical time.

There is also no basis for comparison of data on clerical time spent in processing and data entry, given the variations in types of incident reports handled.  However, there is a clearer picture of the relative time spent in these functions for the different alternatives.  It is reasonably safe to assume that the data entry of a full incident report from a hand-written copy will take an average of 20 minutes.  (Prior measurements from Mesa, Arizona, and other agencies have confirmed this estimate.)  The Phoenix PD estimates that the dictation alternative takes an average of 30 minutes.  This relative difference is reasonable, given the fact that the officer has to do the dictation while data entry is on-going, and one would intuitively expect some greater time to be required than it would take for an experienced data entry person to enter a written report. 

Laptop data entry eliminates the need for clerical labor in report processing and data entry; however, there is not a total saving of staff positions due to the need for quality control work on the submitted reports.  This is likely to account for an average of 5 minutes per report, using the relative estimates above. 

As an example of the cost impacts of these relative numbers, we can construct the following approximate model:

Assumptions:

            number of hours per year for direct work per person = 1,500

            average cost, including fringe benefits per person = $30,000

            total incident reports per year = 100,000

Then the cost of incident report processing and data entry for this example would be evaluated as follows for the three alternatives:

All three alternatives also come with initial implementation costs.  With either dictation or data entry, there are workstation costs associated with these positions.  For field data entry, there are the costs of the acquisition of laptops.  Assuming a total cost of $5,000 per workstation (including hardware software, interfacing), the initial acquisition costs for the three alternatives would be:

The laptop costs assume that, for our example of 100,000 reports per year, there are 200 units deployed.

The equipment acquired generates maintenance costs as well.  Assuming a 10% annual maintenance cost, the total operating cost for each alternative would be:

Viewed from this perspective, the laptop approach would pay for itself in 16 months compared to the dictation option and in 19 months vs. the data entry method.

Report Quality

The shortage of any data on report quality leaves only the possibility of assessing differences by the experiences of those in involved in the process.  Incident report quality is a product of many factors, most notably including the extent to which managers expect quality in report writing and motivate people accordingly.  It is influenced by training, by the perceptions in the field of its importance, and by the tools available to the officers, including the report form itself.

The alternative of post-shift data entry limits the report writing quality to the way the report is completed in the field.  Data entry operators can do little to add information that is not on the form itself, or to correct errors where the reporting officer has made one.  In this kind of process, report quality is also influenced by the job that the field sergeant does in report review prior to the report getting to the data entry staff. Improving report quality requires a good form, training in report writing, supervisor review and feedback, as well as a management emphasis on good report writing practices.  There is no way to ensure that the required fields are filled in except by supervisors checking 100% of the incident reports and rejecting those that are incomplete or incorrect.

On-line dictation imposes another level of review, done by the person taking the dictation, to ensure that all required fields are entered.  This is particularly true if the data being entered in this fashion is connected to required fields in the enterprise database.  It is then not possible to complete the entry without submitting the required information.  It is also likely that the person taking the dictation will help the officer make a better report by asking for optional information if directed to do so.  Since the officer is on the phone during this process, information that might have otherwise not been submitted could potentially be captured. 

Laptop direct entry software can be designed to insist on fields being entered, but this approach also has problems since there are always exceptions to the rule.  A more positive effect on report quality seems to have surfaced in Houston, where the officers are taking a high degree of ownership over the report, and one might assume that this factor will contribute to higher report quality.  Where laptop entered incident reports are entered into a central system in a batch mode, there is no opportunity for on-line editing and rejection of the report, so that mistakes found in the quality control process have to be corrected at a later time.  This approach definitely shifts the burden to the quality control staff, where again there is no opportunity to directly engage the officer to make an addition or correction.

It is interesting to note that neither Phoenix, using the dictation model, nor Houston, using the laptop entry model, rely on field sergeant review and approval of reports prior to their submission and entry into the system.  Instead, both departments rely on feedback from the investigators to the field sergeants regarding the quality of reports in general or from particular individuals. 

There is no clear advantage to any of the alternatives considered here.  Each as its own challenges, and the objective of improved quality is likely to be more dependent on how the process is designed and department leadership encouragement of a quality objective than in the underlying approach.  Process re-engineering will be an important component of the implementation of any of these alternatives.

Other factors

The training of field officers to use the techniques suggested here differs, but training is a mandatory part of any incident reporting solution.  Beyond basic report writing skills, the use of dictation itself requires officer training.  If dictation is to achieve the expected efficiencies, officers need to learn this skill.  Use of the laptop computer requires even more training.  Houston provides 8 hours of training in the use of the laptop computer.  Additional training would be required for any other applications that might be added.  Over time, it is possible that the training requirements will diminish as more entry level personnel have learned to use a computer at home or at school.

There are human factors that bear on this decision as well as cost and quality factors.  In this arena, both dictation and laptop data entry have advantages over the post-shift data entry model.  The dictation approach appears to give officers the perception that their time is not “wasted” in report writing.  Laptop data entry gives officers the perception that their work is important enough to give them the most modern tools.  As has been mentioned, there is the additional potential with laptop computing of increased officer ownership of the report data.

The use of laptop computing by officers is also a sign to the citizenry that the department is attempting to use the most up to date technology to do its work, and is seeking efficient ways to do so.  The image of the department is likely to be enhanced where officers carry laptop computers to do their work.

Conclusion

Entry of incident data in the field using a portable computer is the lowest cost option when measured on the basis of the longer term.  This method also offers the greatest potential for improved report writing because of the involvement of the field officer in directly creating the incident report and the editing capabilities that can be exercised directly during the point of report creation. 

Even if the above analyses did not by themselves lead to the conclusion that a laptop approach is the preferred solution, the potential for new applications in the hands of the field officer offers dramatic new advantages.  There is no doubt that field computers can increase the amount of information at the officer’s disposal, and will therefore improve the officer’s ability to respond to issues in the community. 

The potential of using the computer as a replacement for the MDT and as a local repository for information relevant to community based policing has such great potential that even if the cost analysis did not show a short term payoff, mobile computing would still be the preferred alternative.  Given that these tools show a payback in a relatively short period of time as opposed to alternative solutions, the conclusion that laptop computing is a feasible and preferred solution is clear.

Paul Wormeli

August, 2001

© Copyright 2005 Paul Wormeli. Last update: 3/16/2005; 9:25:18 PM.