A spatial and temporal analysis of the collaborative information behaviour of police officers performing stop and search

This study explores the impacts arising from the introduction of mobile technology (a Personal Digital Terminal or POT) as a way to introduce information disintermediation within policing. Using a case approach, the activities' and reactions of police officers performing a common task that of the Stop and Search was used as a means to understand this change. It was found that the intended audience, officers working alone, rejected the technology because usage encouraged engrossment on the POT leading to discontinuities in their aware of the passage of time (Temporal) and the surrounding environment and the people within it (Spatial). As an occupational group preoccupied with risk, this was seen as posing an unacceptable risk to their safety. However, this was overcome in an unanticipated usage scenario where officers collaborated to perform the Stop and Search. A three factor conceptual model built around the intersection of Spatial/temporal factors and the perception of risk is presented and common usage scenarios from the case study were mapped against it. The study argues that there is a need for those designing and implementing mobile technologies to consider more carefully not simply the organisational role that technology is provided for but the cultures that underpin them and informs the actions of individuals fulfilling such roles. In this case, the preoccupation with managing and minimising risk that Police officers develop due to a mixture of experience and occupational culture. In addition, the study has highlighted that our understanding of how individuals come together as groups for the purposes of information seeking when using technology designed to remove information intermediaries is rudimentary and more work must be done in this area to overcome the issues highlighted here.