The police of Saarland, Germany record approximately 30,000 traffic accidents a year. At a rate of 81 accidents a day, that adds up to a lot of paper work for officers across the city’s 20 police stations.

In the past, officers had to capture all relevant data at the scene of the accident, using pen and paper and taking photographs. They would then return to the station to manually re-enter the same data into the police case management system, POLADIS. This ineffective process was time consuming, duplicated efforts, and ultimately led to additional work to rectify manual errors, such as typos.

A new project was set in motion with the goal to modernize this costly process, giving officers a new mobile app for tablets and smartphones to streamline the reporting process. Together, a group including Saarland Police, Saarland’s Ministry of the Interior, Avanade Germany, Microsoft Germany and HP, set out to make officers more productive.

The leveraged Microsoft’s HybridForms for Policing – a mobile app for tablets and smartphones – with a specifically designed set of forms for traffic and accident management. Saarland police officers access the app right at the scene of the accident, on Windows Smartphones, such as the HP Elite x3, or on Windows Tablets. The app leverages intuitive modern interfaces and allows input from touch, keyboard or smart pens.

Once the data is entered into HybridForms on the mobile app, it is automatically transferred to the central backend management system POLADIS. This Avanade-delivered integration cuts out the need to manually re-enter the information once officers return to the station.

The new mobile application has resulted in significant improvements to operational and administrative processes. After conducting an analysis, the German Institute for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) concluded the app gives officers “double digit” time savings, as well as reduces the occurrence of manual errors.

Perhaps the most important win of all is that police officers now have more time to patrol, keeping Saarland’s citizens safer.

The project status mentioned in this article and the accompanying video does not reflect the current, actual status and proof of concept, but rather the status of the pilot project at that time.

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