The systems meant to help officers are often the very things holding them back.
There's a quote often attributed to Einstein: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For UK policing, this observation has never been more relevant. Despite billions spent on technology, police forces across the country remain trapped in a web of fragmented systems, workarounds, and spreadsheets that actively work against the outcomes they're trying to achieve.
Picture a group of officers unwinding after a shift, talking candidly about their day. What do they complain about? The proportion of time spent on admin versus actually making a difference. The workaround they've built on top of another workaround—which now needs its own workaround. The twelve different systems they need to check just to answer what should be a simple question.A 2023 NPCC report showed that on average, 443000 officer hours are spent on unnecessary admin. This is time equivalent to attending 220,000 domestic abuse incidents, 270,000 burglaries and 740,000 antisocial behaviour incidents.
These aren't exaggerations. They're the daily reality for frontline officers across England and Wales. And at the centre of it all, often serving as the glue holding critical processes together, sits the humble spreadsheet.
Excel has become the canary in the coal mine for organisational dysfunction. When you find mission-critical spreadsheets scattered across an organisation (maintained by individuals who, if they go on holiday, leave entire processes stranded), you've found the symptom of a much deeper problem.
The fragmented data landscape, the hunt for information across multiple systems, the endless re-keying of data—these are symptoms, not causes. The real issue lies in how we fundamentally approach the relationship between people, process, data, and technology.
Consider a simple thought experiment. If you need someone to walk forward and deliver a message, you don't need any technology at all. A person, a simple process, and a small amount of verbal data will suffice. But what happens when the instructions become complex? For example, turn left, walk three steps, sidestep, turn again? Suddenly, that person needs something to help them, like a piece of paper with written instructions.
This is technology and data in their purest forms; tools that exist to support people in executing processes that deliver outcomes. The paper and pencil hold no intrinsic value on their own. It's only when data is applied to them that their purpose becomes clear.
From this simple example, we can derive some foundational truths:
The logical conclusion? Data and technology exist to support people and improve processes to deliver better outcomes. This isn't rocket science—most people feel this truth instinctively. Yet somehow, we've built systems that invert this relationship entirely.
Here's how it typically unfolds. An organisation identifies that it needs core functionality: a records management system, perhaps. Then property and evidence management. Then digital asset management. Command and control. Customer relationship management. Finance and HR.
Each system is excellent at what it does within itself. A finance system generates invoices brilliantly. A CRM manages customer contacts with precision. But what happens when real processes, the ones that actually deliver outcomes, need to span multiple systems?
You get what might be called "spaghetti monster IT."
The National Policing Digital Strategy 2025-2030 acknowledges that 'through ad-hoc local implementation of non-integrated force-specific point solutions to local rather than national blueprints, the flow of data often stops within force boundaries.' The strategy also notes that 'data-led decision making and inadequate technology platforms remain challenges.'
The moment you overlay actual end-to-end processes onto a collection of functional systems, chaos emerges. People switch between screens and applications hunting for information. Data needed for the process but not for any single function gets stored... somewhere else. Integrations multiply. And spreadsheets proliferate to fill the gaps.
The process becomes defined by the systems rather than the systems being designed to support the process. It's process by accident, not by intent. And the results are rarely efficient.
The consequences ripple outward from these technical frustrations into very human impacts.
For frontline officers:
For back-office staff:
For the public:
If the solution is to apply data and technology to process, rather than the reverse, why don't we already do it? There are several reasons, and they're worth understanding.
Processes feel ephemeral: You might see a process sketched on paper or represented in Visio, but unlike a system you can log into or a database you can query, processes lack tangibility. This makes them harder to prioritise and easier to overlook.
Processes are unique: Every organisation has an onboarding process, but each one is different. This is precisely why functional systems proliferate, they're generic enough to be sold repeatedly. Build a bespoke process for one organisation and you can only sell it once. Build a finance system with common functionality and you can sell it thousands of times. The commercial incentives push us toward functional technology, not process optimisation.
We focus on our own domains: People naturally concentrate on discrete areas of interest and knowledge. Your finance team knows the finance system inside out but probably understands very little about the warehouse system. In policing terms, the officers handling initial reports may have limited visibility into digital forensics workflows. This siloed expertise makes it difficult to see—let alone optimise—processes that span multiple domains.
For example, the 2022 State of Policing report found that despite having mobile devices that allow them to complete reports remotely, many officers still frequently return to stations to complete these reports. New systems are sometimes introduced without due consideration being given to how they will be integrated with other systems, supported by effective training or evaluated.
Here's a simple analogy. Most of us have a process for making coffee at home. The kettle boils water faster than a pan on the hob. The spout reduces spillage. But we still walk to the fridge for milk, to a cupboard for the jar, to a drawer for a spoon. Everything we need is scattered around the kitchen.
Now think about a hotel breakfast buffet. What do you see next to the coffee machine? The milk. The mugs. The sugar. The spoons. Everything required for the coffee-making process is right there, in one place, because hotels have optimised for throughput. Coffee machines are pinch points—everyone wants coffee at the same time—so maximising efficiency there improves the entire breakfast experience.
Why don't we do this at home? Because optimising your kitchen around coffee-making would likely harm other processes like cooking dinner, washing up, preparing packed lunches. The trade-offs don't make sense in a domestic context.
But here's the critical insight: an overall process can only run as quickly as its slowest component. Looking at the big picture matters enormously. Speed up one part of a process without considering the whole, and you simply create backlogs in new and interesting places.
For policing, thinking about the big picture means mapping the entire journey from an incident being reported through to resolution, and identifying where data and technology can genuinely support each stage.
It starts with reporting: a potential problem comes in via phone, walk-in, or online. Multiple inputs, but the same overarching process template.
Then recording: capturing the issue in command and control or the records management system. Here's the first opportunity to bring technology to the process—allowing information already gathered to populate downstream systems automatically, rather than being re-keyed. If this doesn't happen, increased report volumes simply create backlogs. Citizens who found it easy to report an issue expect swift progress; delays breed frustration and erode trust.
Next comes prioritisation and triage: bringing together data from multiple sources to understand context, urgency, and routing options.
Then allocation: determining who's available (rostering data), who's actually available given current workload (task management), and who has the right skills for the job.
From there, investigations branch into multiple sub-processes such as custody, forensics, evidence gathering, each with its own loops and dependencies.
Finally, resolution: preparing case files and presenting them to the Crown Prosecution Service.
This broad framework of report, record, assess, allocate, investigate, and resolve can apply not just to core casework but to every organisational function: Workforce management, governance and compliance, finance and procurement. Everything an organisation does is fundamentally a set of processes and every one of them can benefit from this same thinking.
When data and technology are brought to the process rather than processes being forced through functional systems—the benefits cascade throughout the organisation.
Less time on admin, more time making a difference: Officers aren't logging into multiple systems, aren't re-keying data, aren't maintaining spreadsheets. The process captures what's needed as work happens.
Data entered once, used many times: Information flows forward through the process automatically, reducing errors and eliminating duplication.
Less fragmented data, better insight: When data is joined up, relationships become visible. Patterns emerge. Correlations that would never surface in siloed systems become apparent, enabling proactive intervention rather than reactive response.
Improved morale: Not spending time on admin. Seeing outcomes improve for victims. Being able to actually tell someone where their case stands. These aren't small things. They're the difference between feeling proud of your work and feeling embarrassed by it.
UK policing stands at a crossroads. The current approach isn't working, and doing more of the same won't produce different results. The question isn't whether to think differently about technology in policing. The question is how quickly forces can make that shift and what outcomes they can unlock when they do.
The National Policing Digital Strategy 2025-2030 recognises this challenge, calling for forces to modernise local ways of working and embrace better data management at all levels. But strategy documents alone won't solve the problem. What's needed is a genuine shift in thinking, from functional systems first to process and outcomes first.
The problems are clear. The first principles are sound. The path forward requires courage: the willingness to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results, and to start putting processes and the people who execute them, at the centre of how we design and deploy technology.
The challenges facing UK policing technology aren't unique to law enforcement. Any organisation struggling with fragmented systems, critical spreadsheets, and processes that span multiple platforms will recognise these patterns. The solution, in every case, starts with the same question: are your systems serving your processes, or have your processes become servants to your systems?