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COMPOSITE Newsletter Issue 3 - September 2012Dear Subscriber/-in, The EU-funded research project Comparative Police Studies in the EU (COMPOSITE) does interdisciplinary and comparative research in police forces of 10 European countries. It studies similarities and differences of police forces, primarily with respect to the capacity of organisational change. The project aims to identify the factors that contribute to success or failure of these change processes. This September newsletter of COMPOSITE contains information on the following subjects:
Kind regards on behalf of the COMPOSITE newsletter team
Nathalie Hirschmann
Fachhochschule der Polizei des Landes Brandenburg
Bernauer Str. 146
D-16515 Oranienburg
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The focus of the 2012 Public-IT-Security (PITS) congress is on the handling of IT security incidents and the protection of administrative data. The ongoing digital management process fully utilizes many new technologies such as Cloud Computing or Mobile Devices (Smartphones, Netbooks). Therefore, IT-security is an important factor for the acceptance and the use enabled by digital management. The congress is dealing with the issue on how the state can protect against cyber attacks. The two days congress will be hosted at the ddb forum Berlin (Germany) and is organised by the "Behörden Spiegel", a nationwide published journal for the public service in Germany. More information regarding the congress is available via: http://www.public-it-security.de ------------------------------------------------------
Police forces in modern Europe are under various kinds of pressure: social, political, economic, technological, and legal changes force police forces to react. Open societies and open borders offer new chances for criminals. Citizens demand security and value for money, but public funds remain scarce and the demands of police compete with demands from many different sectors in society. Politicians want police to be efficient, lean, responsive, and flexible, but at the same time stable, accountable and strictly sticking to the rules. Senior police officers are expected to perform like managers in big companies, but they are paid only a fraction of private sector salaries and bound by countless bureaucratic rules. Most citizens want their police forces to be professional, internationally oriented and linked across organisational and national borders, technologically advanced, unbureaucratic, friendly and tolerant, culturally open, morally decent and with a high level of personal integrity. We want management and leadership in our police forces to be on a par with the private sector, and we want to be sure that none of our tax payers’ money is wasted on clumsy procedures, inefficiency, and bureaucratic red tape. Numerous change processes in most European police forces try to address these challenges, and most police officers feel subjected to a never ending stream of reforms and reorganisations, new rules and technologies, challenges and demands. Some of these changes succeed and manage to improve performance, raise commitment, and make people feel safer than before. But some changes fail to do so: They destroy rather than build commitment, they lead to a deterioration of professionalism and performance, they destroy trust, and they accrue unexpected costs. How can these divergent demands be reconciled and the dilemmas described above be solved? What are the factors that determine success or failure of change processes? What can we learn from more than 20 years of ambitious change processes in most European countries? How important is organisational culture? What role do external stakeholders play? Are there different types of police forces – types that are more open to change and others that are more conservative and traditional? The international conference “Policing in a dynamic environment – how much change can a police force take?” aims at addressing these issues, bringing together practitioners and scholars, politicians and leaders, researchers and academics to discuss risks and challenges, problems and solutions, theories, typologies, and best practices. The conference will be hosted at the Mercure Hotel in Potsdam (Germany) on the 11th and 12th of December 2012 and is organised by the German COMPOSITE country team of the University of Applied Sciences of the State Police of Brandenburg (Germany), leader of COMPOSITE’s Action Line III (Knowledge Dissemination and Transfer) and in charge of working package 9 (Dissemination). A detailed conference programme - including a registration form - will follow soon. -------------------------------------------------------
Nico Kaptein of Capgemini Telecom Media Defence (France), involved in the COMPOSITE working packages 4 (Technology) and 10 (Monitoring, Training and Consultancy), published an article on “Digital Transformation in Public Security and Policing” in the European Journal of ePractice. The journal is a peer-reviewed online publication focusing on eTransformation, belongs to the ePractice.eu community and is sponsored by the European Commission. The article gives an overview of how society and government are affected by digital transformation and shows how the areas of public security and policing attempt to benefit from their potential advantages. The paper is written in English and available via: http://www.epractice.eu/en/document/5388866. -------------------------------------------------------
Nathalie Hirschmann of the COMPOSITE country team at the University of Applied Sciences of the State Police of Brandenburg (Germany) wrote an article on “Polizeiarbeit 2.0: Facebook, Twitter und Co. Einsatz und Wirkung sozialer Medien in der Polizei“ (Police work 2.0: Facebook, Twitter, and Co. Use and effects of social media in the police). While referring to the COMPOSITE project and the results of working package 4 (Adoption of Technology), the article focuses on the use and effect of social media in the police. The article is published in “Deutsches Polizeiblatt (DPolBl)”, a German police journal that exclusively addresses police officers in Germany. The article is written in German and can be found in issue 5 (September 2012). Abstract: “Police forces are subject to processes of social, economical, political, legal but also technological changes which - intentionally or unintentionally – need to be dealt with. Police organisations are faced with the fact that the social interaction und communication is to an increasing extent taking place via internet-based media. This instance interferes with police organisations and their environment as well” (Hirschmann 2012).
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