Public Sector Roundup: Pens and CCTV go digital

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Fishing regulators go with Leeds digital pen

Fishery protection officers from the North Eastern Sea Fisheries Committee have traded in their pens and paperwork for a digital pen system from Innovation Leeds.

Officers write with the pen on paper in the usual way, but a camera embedded in the device digitises the notes and sends them directly to a computer, saving data inputting time.

Ian Jones, Senior Consultant at Innovation Leeds said: "The user can be anywhere from the quayside to actually out on the boat and instantly send the data captured on a form back to the central database using a combination of Bluetooth technology and a standard mobile phone."

Giles Bartlett, Environmental Officer with North Eastern Sea Fisheries said: "North Eastern Sea Fisheries were looking at looking at modernising our approach to data capture and had been considering the use of PDAs when we started working with Innovation Leeds. For ease of use and serviceability in the unusual environmental conditions in which fishery officers worked the pen solution seemed ideal."

Peterborough taxis get digital CCTV

Peterborough City Council and local cab company have teamed up to implement a new CCTV scheme from iKabs, which automatically records all the activity in the car and saves it to a disk, which can only be accessed by the local constabulary.

Ken Gray, the city council's principal taxi enforcement officer, said: "This is an exciting project that we are carrying out with all 191 Hackney carriages in Peterborough. The whole point is for the protection of the public and for the driver."

Hackney intends to rollout the iKabs system nationally. Supported by advertising on a flat-screen monitor inside the car, iKabs does not cost the driver or the local authority anything.

Wigan saves £90,000 with Civica policing software

By extending the use of Civica's Public Protection software to stations in Manchester, Wigan Council has saved £90,000 in police time, simply by letting officers request clips from their 550 CCTV cameras electronically. Before this technology, officers had to fill out paper forms and then visit the necessary station, eating up some 90 hours of time a month.

Craig Round, information and communications Manager, Wigan Council Environmental Services Department, said: "The return the council and our police are getting has been immediate in terms of time and resources saved."

The council is also piloting a central database for its civil contingencies group, which would give emergency services easier access to shared data.

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