Cutting edge tech saving Bedfordshire Police officers' time

Cutting edge technology has been helping save thousands of hours of Bedfordshire Police officers’ time.

The force is the first in the country to use artificial intelligence to auto redact documents, reducing the time spent on tasks which could have taken entire shifts to a few minutes.

Bedfordshire Police has teamed up with tech giants Amazon Web Services (AWS) to identify issues where technology can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of police services. AWS identify potential providers to work with the force on different solutions.

This tranche of work focuses on reducing the time taken by officers and staff to redact material such as personal data before it is sent to the Crown Prosecution Service. The data redaction product Riven DocDefender was built with the help of officers and uses algorithms and text recognition to achieve 92 per cent accuracy in its pilot.

It is estimated that once embedded it will save more than 9,500 officer and staff hours a year.

Since DocDefender was deployed in June 2023, there have been several case studies evidencing the product's efficiencies.

• A Detective Constable redacted a phone download of 578 pages for her colleague in 20 minutes (which would previously have taken a couple of days). The DC said that the new product was a 'game changer'.
• A DC redacted an 806-page document in approximately an hour. He had spent his entire previous shift redacting half the document, before putting the whole document through DocDefender.
• A field intelligence officer redacted 350,000 cells in an Excel spreadsheet in 30 minutes, something that would have previously taken four hours.

Chief Constable Trevor Rodenhurst said: “This is another example of where technology can make a real difference to policing. It is saving hundreds of hours already, time which can be spent doing the work the public want – being out in our communities preventing crime and keeping people safe.

“This is just one of a number of tech solutions we are exploring, all with the aim of improving our service to the public and allowing our workforce to concentrate on policing." 

Riven, which designed the DocDefender system with AWS, said: "We have several safeguards in place to ensure the technology is used responsibly.

"We are proud that it gives officers significant time back to police their communities."