OFFICERS of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) will be better equipped to analyse data on crime through the Geographic Information System (GIS).
In an effort to build capacity, government, through the Citizens Security Strengthening Programme, will be training approximately 20 officers in the area of GIS over the next two days.

GIS is a primary component of the Integrated Crime Information System (ICIS) that will be implemented for use by the crime observatory and the GPF.
It will capture, manage, manipulate and display spatial reference in data in the electronic format.

GIS consultant, Valrie Grant, said the idea is to make sure persons who are responsible for maintaining and managing the systems are competent.

“We will be doing capacity-building with those persons,” said Grant, during the opening session of the training programme at the GPF Training Centre on Thursday.
The programme is an introduction to GIS training which is expected to help officers understand the system and understand how it affects crime analysis.

“They will also be looking at just the use of the software, data collection and input; how they can do analysis, quality assurance and control by way of web maps,” Grant said.
The main aim is to teach officers how to assess information and use it in their daily operations to make their responsibilities more effective.

Given that everything happens somewhere, it is a geographic phenomenon, said Grant, adding that in this sense, it makes GIS a useful tool to help people understand where things are occurring; where things could potentially occur; understand trends; identify hotspots and understand historical information so that they can do strategic analysis and look at recent information to do tactical analysis.

Interpreting and understanding the information is, however, only part of the citizen security strengthening project. Grant said another part of the project is about putting infrastructure in place.

“We have been looking at the data collection element which is part of the project we are putting together and at the end, the infrastructure will be in place,” she said.
The project, which is scheduled to end in three months, will ensure that there is a comprehensive system in place for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica).

According to Grant, the project serves as a pilot and is expected to be rolled out across the country.

The Government of Guyana, with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), had undertaken the reform and transformation of the Guyana police force (GPF) from an incident-driven reactive institution, to one that relies on analysis of patterns, incidents and problems.

A major initiative of this reform is to design, develop and implement an ICIS to support the Ministry of Public Security and the GPF in creating an enabling environment wherein comprehensive, up-to-date crime-related information is readily available and shared through the use of the modern technology.

The ICIS will incorporate virtual workspaces into its features so as to facilitate information-sharing and online collaboration among law-enforcement agencies involved in countering narcotics and other such operations.

Designed conceptually along the lines of social networking tools like Facebook and My Space, the virtual workspaces will be private and highly-secured with collaborative tools that will allow the GPF, CID, SB, CANU and the GDF to collaborate online and in real-time in efforts against illegal narcotics and other activities.