Are there challenges in teamwork that technology could help solve? We put the question to two different law enforcement teams in two different countries.

It’s well known that there are many benefits of working in teams instead of silos – there are synergies, better quality results, faster investigations and shared workload just to mention a few. In criminal investigations working alone not only adds a lot of mental stress, but also a dependency on an individual to make progress on a case. You rely on one person’s view and expertise instead of a joint effort.

However, there are a number of challenges with working in teams, from interaction between people to work processes and the tools available.

We asked two different law enforcement teams in two different countries, each with 5-10 team members, which team challenges could be solved or improved with the help of technology.

Challenge: Sharing workload and knowledge

Different law enforcement teams work differently, but with increasingly large seizures of images and videos, several investigators often need to work together to process larger cases quicker and share the workload. Not to mention relieving the stress and strain on individuals who carry the weight of a case on their own.

“The technical solutions that we use at the moment don’t allow us to work several people simultaneously on the same case, which slows us down. It’s frustrating … a technical solution that allowed us to work several people on the same case at the same time, would considerably increase the speed with which we can work through high priority cases.”

Challenge: Dispersed knowledge

A different but related challenge also arises when a whole team works together to process a case. The case can then easily be divided into several different parts and processed on a number of different work devices, increasing the risk of missing important information or duplicating efforts. Being able to store the information and collective knowledge centrally would mean that the information is not isolated to a single investigator but shared with the team.

Challenge: Hardware limitations

Another challenge is that the hardware available for investigators may differ within teams or between teams.

“Hardware limitations is one of our big challenges across the country. Locally, there are big variations in laptops and other computers available for investigators, and at the same time we have to deal with enormous volumes of material – the norm and the starting point is often half a million images in a single case. That means it can take days just to load a case. It would help those investigators tremendously if the processing power was instead located at the core of the technical solution in use.”

With centralised processing power, the types of workstation or device that the team members have access to become less important. As a result, fewer resources are required from both a hardware and maintenance perspective, and investigations can become more effective.

“A key factor in the security of technical solutions is the ability to store and process information centrally.”

Overcoming the challenges with Griffeye Analyze Operations

As a technology provider, we at Griffeye have always prided ourselves in listening closely to our users and hearing what they need to overcome their challenges. We are committed to technology that helps people and teams become even better at what they do, freeing up time and resources for investigators to focus on what they do best – cracking the case.

With Griffeye Analyze Operations we take that commitment to the next level. Learn more about Analyze Operations here. And If you have any comments, questions, suggestions or requests, please contact us!