Somebody (I wish I remembered who because they’d get my vote) was talking on the radio the other day and resonated with something that’s been at the back of my brain (an engineer’s brain) for some time. There was talk about legislating something better, like the NHS or the Police forces or somesuch. This person said we don’t need any more legislation, we need to better implement what we have. This is right on the button.

Some examples:

When I phoned in a statement, the officer read it back to me and I had some changes to make. At one point, the officer had to stop me because when I added a word, the last word on that line fell off the end or the line and he needed to type it in at the start of the next line, and a word fell off the end of that line and then … etc.

When I phoned in an abandoned car, they took a couple of hours to get back to me and ask me were the road was that I’d told them about. The answer was: opposite York police station. The trick here was that although I’d dialled the York number, the call had gone to Northallerton, and the switchboard had no idea that the call was made to the York number. When I later mentioned this to the staff at the front desk they said they have the same problem. They don’t know whether they are calling their own switchboard or someone else’s.

A friend had a bunch of stuff stolen which later showed up on ebay. When explaining this to the police, the police officer said he would have to look at home because they weren’t allowed to use the internet at work.

So here is my (software guy’s) sweeping manifesto for Plice reform

• Give them text editors with word wrap! Notepad is better than what they were forced to deal with!
• Give them and us phones that go to the places they say they’ll go, and give the person picking up the phone a clue about where the person is calling from!
• Allow them to police the internet!

It’s what I see right across the board. Education, health, and policing need some time to implement and refine their tools and processes - time spent with the government NOT putting its oar in and taking up resources in steering groups and fact-finding missions etc.