The huge book is gone: National Police Service launches digital OB

Inspector-General of Police Hilary Mutyambai accompanied by Kasarani OCPD Peter Kimani launch a Digital Occurrence Book (OB)at Kasarani Police Station. The technology among other benefits ensures that all entries made are a permanent record that cannot be edited, thus guaranteed transparency and accountability in police operations at the station level. [John Muchucha, Standard]

The National Police Service is set to launch the final phase of digitisation of their operations in an event that will see Nairobi being the first to roll it out.

The event, taking place at Buruburu Police Station in Nairobi is aimed at ensuring all Occurance Books are managed digitally in Nairobi before the same is rolled out to other parts of the country.

Police have already migrated all their personnel records to a digital platform and the digitisation of the OB as well as all the accompanying crime management systems is the next move.

“All concerned officers have been trained and armed with the needed gadgets for the exercise to take off. We are ready,” said a senior officer aware of the plans.

You will no longer be entering incidents in OB manually after the launch of the exercise.

Inspector-General of Police Hilary Mutyambai is at the event which will see the policing take a new twist with the integration of technology.

The service had last year launched a digital OB at Kasarani Police Station as a test for the program.

Mutyambai said the digital system is to ensure that all entries made are on permanent record and cannot be edited.

This will guarantee transparency and accountability in police operations at the station level. The reports entered will be subject to monitoring by ward, county and regional commanders as well as the Inspector General and other top commanders.

The digital OB is part of the government policy to digitise service delivery for Kenyans. The reports entered through the digital OB will be subject to monitoring by ward, county and regional commanders as well as the IG and other top commanders.

The IG added that digitising police OB is in line with the government’s policy of digitising services that are critical to service delivery to Kenyans.

In the past, there have been cases of records disappearing from the police stations manual OB books.

In 2017, the National Police Service was urged to discard the physical OB that involved the manual recording of crime-related incidents at their stations.

“We shall also digitise all our administrative procedures and systems,” said Matiang’i.

He added this will enhance real-time reporting of crimes hence proper management to make the service a world-class outfit.

Matiang’i said digitisation is the best way to address many issues affecting policing.

“This will help officers to manage and address some of the reported issues in real-time. Embrace digital OB which is on the way,” he said.

The CS said the use of manual Occurrence Book across the country by NPS was cumbersome and difficult to obtain instant information on the nature of prevailing crimes in different locations in the country.

Matiangi said most of the government services had been moved to a digital platform and that if the police adopted the digital format in recording incidents at their various stations, it would ease the efficient collection of data that could be accessed instantly for the formulation of effective strategies to rapidly respond to incidents and crime.