PhD research students

Rachael Lindsay

Date of Start of Studies: July 2007
Country: England
Supervisors: Dr. Louise Cooke and Dr. Tom Jackson
Email: r.e.lindsay@lboro.ac.uk
Research Group: Knowledge Management Research Group

Title: Mobilising the Information and Knowledge Environment within the Leicestershire Constabulary.

After completing a degree in Information Management and Computing at Loughborough, I developed a particular interest in the application of knowledge management to real world problems.

I intend to take this interest further by applying knowledge management principles to the achievement of the Leicestershire Constabulary’s policing objectives. Police organisations are highly knowledge intensive. Recently, the government has invested £50 million of public money into a mobile information technologies initiative for UK police forces as a result of recent speech from the Prime Minster to equip 10,000 police officers with handheld computers by the end of 2008 . Mobilising information and knowledge processes of policing organisations will grant police officers direct access to information previously accessed only by radio communications or by returning to a police station to use a desktop computer; where police officers can access information related to entities such as suspects, car registrations, warrants of arrest and will be able to record statements, view photographs and capture signatures and fingerprints electronically while on the go . Consequently, the highly bureaucratic nature of policing may be altered, by reducing the need for lengthy paper-based processes and call operators to relay information. As such, this is leading towards possible realisation of a theoretical ‘mobile knowledge management’ concept within the policing arena.

The project aims to optimise and evaluate the mobilisation of information and knowledge processes within the Leicestershire Constabulary. In doing so, it aims to gain a theoretical understanding of knowledge management within a policing context. It is intended that the research will help to identify the reuse of crime related information and improve knowledge sharing in police networks, leading to requirements for mobile technologies and crime scene recording. Specific elements of the research include:

• The importance and application of mobile knowledge management in police organisations for crime recording and other policing purposes, using the Leicestershire Constabulary as a case study.
• Investigating the information literacy and retrieval skills of police officers and recognising the implications of mobile technology on perceived information literacy skills of police officers, which will produce recommendations to improve and assist with information literacy issues amongst operational police officers. For example, by structuring and representing data and information for automatic entry and efficient retrieval onto the Leicestershire Constabulary Crime and Intelligence Information System (CIS) through the use of structuring techniques, this may reduce the emphasis on information literacy skills of officers and work towards improving data quality within the Force.
• Investigating the impact of mobilisation on current organisational processes in terms of effectiveness and efficiency through a qualitative multi-method approach
• Analysing the main factors affecting the user acceptance of mobile technologies
• Integrating the findings into theoretical approaches and models regarding user acceptance of technologies
• The development of an evaluation framework to enable police forces to select the solution that best matches their information and knowledge needs and user requirements
• The evaluation of the impact of mobilisation on knowledge flows within the organisation

Awards

Awarded the 2009 PhD student prize at the UKAIS doctoral consortium in Oxford in March, after presenting on work with Leicestershire Constabulary. Prof. Ray Paul's evaluation of her session and response to questions was that she was without doubt the best PhD student at the conference. She was put through a very gruelling questioning, which (in Prof Paul's words) 'she handled admirably'.

External Activities

Invited speaker for the National Policing Improvement Agency in Ryton in February 09.

Publications

Lindsay, R., Cooke, L. & Jackson, T.W. The Impact of Mobile Technology on a UK Police Force and their Knowledge Sharing. Journal of Information and Knowledge Management, 2009, 8(2), 101-112. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/5687
Lindsay, R.E., Jackson, T.W. and Cooke, L., "An Evaluation Framework for the Selection of a Mobile Policing Information Solution", Proceedings ECIME 2009, The 3rd European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation, Dan Remeyni, Academic Conferences International, The 3rd European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, September 2009, pp293-302, [also on CD-ROM].https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/5691