Police e-readiness assessment: a case study of five Kenyan police stations

Abstract

Information technology has become an increasingly important factor in carrying out police operations way from information capturing, prediction of crimes, taking finger prints, surveillance, investigations, decision formulation, among others. The efforts to adopt information technology largely depends on existence of comprehensive metrics for measuring readiness of any organization, department, firm or company as it is very crucial to planners and policy makers. To that end, there have been a number of frameworks developed and tested on e- readiness but few, if any, exist that have been formulated or tested to be used in gauging the e readiness of policing organization. A good number of the maturity models developed have either focused on a government as whole or other organizations like the health sector, education sector and the private sector. Further, most of these tools disregard the internal organizational culture and structure of administration. The rigidity of police organizations and their relative difference in culture makes it a unique area that is worth studying and establishing factors that may be necessary to implement information and communication technology. This study was aimed at defining organizational requirements that are necessary for the determination of the level of e-readiness in the police station in Kenya. This was accomplished by reviewing available literature on already developed e readiness models and selecting one that relates closely to the police station setup. Thus, this study contributes an integrated e-readiness model for assessing the e-readiness of police stations in Kenya. The study was conducted in five police stations/camps in Kenya selected based on geographic location and the branch of police service i.e. the Administration police service and the Kenya police service. As such, this study sought to extend work done previously particularly in the literature review and the processes dimension by laying emphasis on the Perceived E-Readiness Model and introduction of two more factors into the Perceived organizational E-readiness construct. Further this study revealed that most of the police stations and camps are at moderate levels of readiness that requires initiatives like training of officers, purchasing of more computer equipment’s, enhancing access to internet, creating more awareness and coming up with policies to govern the use.