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Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad March 17, 2016

Computerisation of a Police Department in ASWI

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“The government is keen towards computerisation; however, since the number of people in the
department is so large, I am confused up to which level of the hierarchy to target and what
modules of the software should be implemented at the beginning. Also, the kind of training that
has to be imparted and the content of the training programme are difficult to determine. ”

Mr. Ajay Vasav, Inspector General of Police of ASWI (A state in Western India) he shared his
apprehensions about the computerisation process in the state. This initiative was being taken

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when the Government of India had envisaged a centralised crime and criminal tracking system
to harness the power of information technology.

INTRODUCTION

According to Ajay, policing is one of the most difficult jobs in the government as it requires 52 x
7 x 24 vigil (52 weeks in a year, seven days a week, and 24 hours a day). Any improper action,
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whether taken before time or delayed, may hurt the case. There were many duties that the
police had to perform, which ranged from maintaining law and order, monitoring anti-national
activities, controlling crime, providing protection and so on. The geographic span in which the
department worked was vast. Ajay shared,

“A rural police station may have scores of villages under its jurisdiction. While each police
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station and police-chowkey 1 has limited authority, the criminals and offenders do not work in
limited areas. Their domain overlaps various police territories. Effective policing requires
interactions and sharing of information at the police-chowkey, police station, district, inter-
district, inter-state and international level. In such conditions, it is crucial that police personnel
frequently exchange information which comes to their notice. In others words, to be effective,
every police personnel should have the right information available to them to take the right
decisions at the right time.”
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Ajay shared that till until recently, the information system in the police had been manual, quite
archaic and did not make use of available or latest technology. Emphasis was on the recording
of facts than on dissemination and use of information. The officials of the police department
understood that it was time to adopt technology and replace manual records and dissemination
of information with electronic records and dissemination.
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1 Police chowkey is Hindi for police outpost.

Prepared by Professor Sanjay Verma, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The author is
thankful to Ms. Priyanka Sharma, Research Associate, for her support.
Cases of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad are prepared as a basis of classroom discussion.
They are not designed to present illustrations of either correct or incorrect handling of administrative
problems.
@2015 by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
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The interaction of the case author with various police officers indicated that this need towards
computerisation was not a new phenomenon. Various attempts had been made to computerise

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the police department in different states. While some states had made reasonably good
progress, others had not. This current attempt at the computerisation of a Police Department in
ASWI was the third one of its kind. According to Ajay, this time, it had seen some success,
albeit not full, in sowing the seeds of computerisation. However, it was still, “Miles to go
before we sleep”.

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BACKGROUND OF THE COMPUTERISATION PROJECT 2

In 1979, the National Police Commission, which was set up by the Government of India,
recommended the creation of a nodal agency, which would suggest standard formats for
maintenance of crime-criminal records at all the police stations in the country. The same
common format could also be utilised to created shareable databases at Police Stations, and

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District, State and National Levels. Based on this recommendation, the National Crime Records
Bureau (NCRB) was established in 1986 with the amalgamation of the Directorate of
Coordination Police Computers, Central Finger Print Bureau, Data Section of Coordination
Division of Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistical Section of the Bureau of Police
Research and Development. The National Crime-Criminal Information System (NCCIS) was
conceived as part of the police computerisation plan approved with the objective of managing
the high volume of crime and criminal-related information geographically dispersed all over the
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country and facilitating the real-time, on-line sharing of the information through integrated
networking.

In 1993, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), New Delhi, linked the State Crime
Records Bureau (SCRB) at the state capital with the Crime and Criminal Information System
(CCIS). According to the NCRB website, CCIS was implemented in 35 States and UTs (Union
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Territories), 727 police districts and at the national level, using standard software and hardware.
It was envisioned that more than 15,000 police stations and more than one lakh police posts in
the country would come onto this network once the computerisation exercise was over. The
application had been designed and developed under UNIX OS using INGRES RDBMS. Post the
Y2K 3 problem, the system was migrated from UNIX to a Windows platform. The application
was upgraded to support various Indian languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil,
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Gurmukhi, and Kannada besides Hindi and English. Also, the queries and reports were made
web enabled. NCRB had prepared formats for registering a First Information Report (FIR),
arrests, and other crimes so that access to records and data became easier. Initially, the FIR was
to be in the recommended format and after feeding data, it could be stored directly in the
computers in police stations. Networking between the police stations was to be done after
feeding the old records and data. However, there were gaps between vision and
implementation. The project did not get completed as envisaged. NCRB was in the process of
implementing CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems). CCTNS would be
a country-wide network of crimes and criminals, and would help in tracking criminals.
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2The history of computerisation is abstracted from http://ncrb.nic.in accessed on 4 December 2015.

3Y2K or Year 2000 was a bug in software developed before 2000 where the six digit format of date was used instead
of eight digit format.

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DEVELOPMENTS IN POLICE COMPUTERISATION

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NCRB 4 had come up (in 2004) with new software called ‘Common Integrated Police
Application' (CIPA) aimed at the automation of the three main functions carried out at the
police stations - registration, investigation and prosecution. CIPA was a multilingual software
designed to work in various Indian languages. A phased implementation of CIPA in the
country was planned with 10% of the police stations (1,400 PS) being taken first, which was

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expected to be over by March 2007. Training programmes had been designed and state and
district level committees had been put in place for the speedy implementation of the CIPA
project in states. 1,280 sites had been earmarked, and hardware had been delivered at all
locations. According to the plan, approximately 3,700 police stations were to be included in the
second phase of CIPA implementation. With various states at different levels of
computerisation before the introduction of CIPA, the different challenges faced in the second
round of automation are explained below.

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A few states like ASWI where manual systems were used in the police station, the challenge
was to implement the new computerisation project (CIPA) in a manner that it enveloped the
whole department and did not remain a project localised in the office of the police
commissioner. Decisions related to hardware, software, networking, training and databases
were critical for the successful implementation of this project. On the other hand, states like
Andhra Pradesh, which had heavily used Internet-based applications in the police department
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and most of the applications were developed using a Microsoft based platform were in a bind,
as moving towards CIPA would mean discontinuing some of their tested applications and
using a new platform which they were not sure would be successful. Other state-led initiatives
such as Automated Finger Print Identification System (AFIS) in Madhya Pradesh, Police IT in
Karnataka, Thana (Police Station) Tracking System in West Bengal, Crime Analysis Automatic
Record Updating System (CAARUS) in Tamil Nadu and Home Department Integrated
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Information Total Solution (HDIITS) in Gujarat were also in progress 5.

Computerisation in ASWI Police

The first computer in the police department was introduced in the late 80s in the DGP’s office in
the capital city of the state. Computerisation at the district level started with the CCIS project in
the mid 90s with the introduction of the X486 processor-based personal computers. Pentium I,
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Pentium II and Pentium III-based computers followed as and when these were introduced.
Pentium IV computers were used as servers. Though the hardware was provided to various
police stations, no software was developed or provided. CCIS developed by NCRB was the first
software developed for departmental requirements. As done in other states of India, it was
implemented in ASWI also. Subsequently, a few police officers were trained in applications
such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. The police department did not evaluate whether
the training was successful or not. Anyone who produced a training completion certificate was
considered to be computer literate.
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4 http://ncrb.nic.in/sib.htm accessed on 25 February 2016

5http://ncrb.nic.in/BureauDivisions/CCTNS/All%20State%20RFP/Madhya%20Pradesh/SI%20RFP%20Vol%201%2

0-%20Part%20I.pdf accessed on 25 February 2016

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Yogesh, another DIG in the state shared,

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“But terming the first attempt at computerisation of state police as successful will be an
overstatement. Though time and again there had been talks of modernising the police force and
under this pretext a lot of hardware was dumped into the police stations, in real terms, little was
done to make the hardware work. There had always been a requirement of trained manpower,
proper maintenance of machines, right infrastructure, stationery and software.”

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The Government of ASWI, in its attempt to develop an integrated software for the police
department, had awarded a contract to a Large Software Development Company (LSDC). In
2010, a Large Consulting Company (LCC) was hired to advise the Government on
implementing the project. The solution by LSDC was renamed as eCop. It had more features
than CCTNS as it included administration, finance, HR, etc. Network connectivity was
provided through BSNL 6/SWAN (State Wide Area Network) lines from the Superintendent of

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Police (SP)/Director General of Police (DGP) office. According to Ajay, the interesting feature of
the software was automatic fingerprint identification. With this feature, the fingerprint of any
criminal could be matched with the existing database of fingerprints and the crime record of
criminals could be seen. More than 1.5 million fingerprints were recorded in the database.

For the preparation of personnel, approximately 10,000 police personnel were trained in the use
of a computer. Role-based training was provided to more than 2,000 police personnel, and 95%
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of the police staff was given username and passwords. However, the actual usage was much
smaller.

The project started in 1999-2000. Initially, it was to be implemented on the Windows platform 7.
Subsequently, UNIX was chosen and later again a switch was made to the Windows platform.
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PROBLEMS IN COMPUTERISATION OF A POLICE DEPARTMENT

There were some complexities which a police department typically faced. For example, the
police was a department tightly monitored by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Ajay explained,

“The police have to act by the rules and laws. For any change in the process of police
administration, external agencies are also involved. Any request initiated by the police
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department is sent to the home department, under which the police works. The home department
after evaluating the requests consults the legal department. The legal department gives its
recommendations to the home department that further passes it on to police department. Hence,
any change becomes a long drawn process making it a difficult exercise.”

Describing the interaction with the judiciary, he mentioned,

“Further, the police works in close collaboration with the courts. Any criminal case has to be
filed in the court. The police cannot file a case in just any court. Each court has certain police
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6 BSNL or Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited was a Government owned telecommunications company. SWAN or state

wide area network was a computer network connecting most of the government offices to district and lower level
offices.
7 Windows and UNIX are operating systems, a software necessary to run a computer.

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stations under its jurisdiction, and for a particular police station, the case is lodged in that
particular court. Deviations, if any, are not accepted by courts. For example, if the jurisdiction

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of the police station is changed due to the creation of a new police station and if this change is
not notified to the courts, the court may refuse to accept the complaint.”

However, there was not much of a problem as far as the lower courts were concerned. The
problem started at the level of the high court where each court had jurisdiction over a particular

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district. For example, when a new district was created by the bifurcation of an existing district
and the high court was not notified, there might be a problem of jurisdiction, and the case might
not be accepted.

In the case of a cognizable offence, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered and in the
event of a non-cognizable offence, the complaint was recorded in a Community Service Register
(CSR) 8. The complaint could be filed at any police station. If a complainant visited the police

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station and provided the information verbally, the police officer noted down the details that
were then verified and signed by the complainant. The information about crime could also be
provided through phone, e-mail or letter by the victim or someone on his or her behalf. The
registered FIR was then transferred to the concerned police station. This process was manual,
which caused unnecessary delay in the investigation. Refer to Exhibit-1 for an FIR sample
format.
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Comprehensive software for police administration required coverage of 18 departments such as
prison, CID, IB, anti-corruption, home-guards, etc. The department also interacted with other
departments such as the passport office. Therefore, any software that covered only a few
departments would leave a lot of things to be done manually, and hence might not be
acceptable.
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Due to such rigidities, it became difficult to do any BPR (business process re-engineering)
exercise before computerisation. It was a well-established fact that computerisation without
BPR lead to automation of inefficient processes with lower levels of flexibility, and was a sure
shot recipe for failure.

Talking about the skill sets available, Ajay said,

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“Another problem with this initiative was the level of education. Till a decade ago, the
minimum requirement to join the police force was 7th-class pass which subsequently became
10-12th-class pass. Therefore, employees who could work on computers were negligible. Hence,
computer training was made compulsory for these personnel. They had to clear an examination
that was conducted by an external agency. In case they did not pass the exam, they were given
one rank demotion, and it would hurt their income post retirement. The strictness led the
personnel to scout for computer proficiency certificate at all costs, even without achieving
proficiency. Some of the new recruits were, however, proficient in basic working of computers,
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and it was these people who were helping in the success of the computerisation drive in the
police force.”

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Information_Report

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Some of the new recruits had innovative ideas and the motivation to put them into action. For
example, Raghu Thokre, a constable at the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) developed apps

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(app means a mobile application) for searching the criminal database and records of vehicle
ownership respectively. The apps were immensely helpful in detecting crimes and solving
criminal cases.

Very few people knew typing in the local language. Hence, those who knew typing were

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assigned to that job. They worked as typists and were not given any other role at the police
station. Even the police inspectors, who were given their usernames and passwords, did not
log-in on their own. They shared their passwords with their subordinates who logged-in on
behalf of their superiors. According to Ajay, thus, people who knew computers were typecast
and restrained from taking over other better opportunities in the police department. Many
senior police functionaries also were not comfortable with computers. They left it to their
subordinates to operate the PC and provide them with information. Refer to Exhibit 2 for the

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hierarchy of the police organisation.

Further, most of the police personnel (Exhibit 3) were always on field duty. These on-field
policemen did not have any work in the office or police station. Reaching such people was a
significant challenge for the person leading the IT initiatives in the state. They were expected to
report immediately to the crime scene, which led to a delay in following the standard
procedures of recording crime. At the crime scene, they had to record some crucial facts, for
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example, they had to count the exact number of rounds fired, empty shells had to be traced and
reported. All the stock check and matching had to be done later, and it was not a real-time
process. An action report was filed much later than when the incident happened. These people
could probably make the best use of the technology both as a source as well as the recipient of
information.
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As reported, the current initiative towards computerisation was not the first one in this
direction. Quite a few efforts had already failed previously, and this initiative also lacked speed.
It was becoming apparent that for the success of this large-scale IT project, an entirely different
strategy needed to be followed.

AJAY’S PLIGHT
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Ajay was in a quandary about how to measure the performance of the police personnel once the
system was in place. Currently, the number of crimes in an area determined the performance of
the station in-charge. Whether it needed modification or not, was perplexing, he said,

“It is a human tendency to resist change, and I am worried that the system may not be adopted
quickly. In light of the above, I want a well-knit training programme, and I want everyone in
the police hierarchy, from Director General of Police to Sub-Inspector, to attend the training
programme. I want them to understand the nitty-gritty of the system and realise the potential of
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the system.”

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It was commonly believed that police personnel were not at all citizen friendly 9. People
found it difficult to interact with the police even for simple jobs such as registration of FIRs.

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Ajay said,

“I want my department to understand the benefits of the system so as to overcome barriers related
to its usage. Since technology could be overwhelming, I want that the training programme that
IIMA designs should make people comfortable with technology. The software being designed may

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be very efficient but its non-use can make the whole exercise futile. Sometimes, I wonder how to
go ahead and computerise the policing activities in the state.”

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No
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9 Indian Police 2001: What Went Wrong Here? Hardcover – Mar 1998 by James Vadackumchery (Author) sourced
from https://books.google.co.in/books?id=xWbDRZvE-
uoC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=indian+police+citizen+relations&source=bl&ots=EI8Y_cMsGs&sig=mC6V5vbkn1Xn
teVx8hLqN7qtSXI&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwj71-
DXn53LAhUKjo4KHYxiB8EQ6AEIHTAB#v=onepage&q=indian%20police%20citizen%20relations&f=false accessed
on 29 February 2016.

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Exhibit 1: Sample Format of FIR

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Source: http://www.fixindia.org/fir.php accessed 4 December 2015

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Exhibit 2: Hierarchical Structure of Police Organisation

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Director General of
Police

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Additional Director
General of Police

Inspector General of
Police

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Deputy Inspector
General of Police

Superintendent of
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Police

Additional Superintendent of
Police
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Deputy Superintendent of
Police

Inspector of
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Police

Sub-Inspector of
Police

Civil Police Officer

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Grade-I

Civil Police Officer

Grade-II
Source: http://bprd.nic.in/writereaddata/linkimages/1645442204-volume%201.pdf accessed 4 December 2015

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Exhibit 3: Hierarchy of Police Personnel

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SP and

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above (100+)

Dy. SPs (250+)

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Police Inspectors +Sub
Inspectors (3000+)

Assistant Sub-Inspectors, Constables,

Lok Rakshak Dal etc. (70,000)
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Source: Documents provided by Ajay
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No
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