Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Computers in police stations, but connectivity not now

By K.T. Sangameswaran

CHENNAI APRIL 14. A long-pending idea of providing computers to all police stations in the State seems to be taking shape at last with the department going in for purchase of 1,250 computers with peripherals.

Tenders for procurement were opened last week and if all goes well, the authorities hope to complete the process of providing the facility at least partially this year.

Though the computer will give a touch of modernity to even a small police station in a remote corner of the State, for the time being it will serve only as a "glorified typewriter".

Storing of information and retrieval will be made easy. For easy understanding by personnel, a Tamil software will be made available. However, the link between a police station and even the District Police Office concerned, leave alone the State police headquarters here, is not possible at present in the absence of Last Mile Connectivity. The Police department alone cannot decide the matter relating to connectivity, whose provision is subject to technical feasibility by the Telecommunications department, official sources say.

The introduction of computers in police stations, as a long-term objective, has been talked about for the past few years and the implementation of the project is in pursuance of the Chief Minister, Ms.Jayalalithaa's announcement at a conference of Collectors and police officers in December last that Rs.272 crores was sanctioned in two years for modernising the force.

Computers are already available in headquarters units. They have also been procured for district police offices and six commissionerates (nine systems each). Offices of four Inspectors-General of Police for north, south, central and western zones would each be provided with two computers and DIG range offices four computers each. The facility would be extended to the railway police, special units and the special battalions. The networking of offices of SPS, DIGs and the police headquarters would be taken up. Integration will facilitate sending mails and file transfer operations. Establishing connectivity between various offices will obviate the necessity of putting a large number of personnel on "tapal messenger duty".

Simultaneously, a pilot project to computerise police station records is being experimented in Salem, Thanjavur and Coimbatore. Plans are afoot to have a Wide Area Network to link the police headquarters. However, much depends on how the facility is used by the personnel to improve the department's functioning and public image.

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