Essay Extract - Abu Dhabi Police
3.1 Introduction
The focal point of this paper is to develop a plan that would be successfully implementing an organizational change management system within Abu Dhabi Police department in order to increase its efficiency, development and achieving future objectives. This chapter will talk about the establishment of Abu Dhabi Police and its progress achieved during the past years. It will also discuss the organisational changes occurred and the outcomes from other changes.
3.2 The Background of Abu Dhabi Police (ADP)
Abu Dhabi Police has recently celebrates its Golden Jubilee. In January 1957, ADP was established by late H.H. Shaikh Shakhbut Bin Sultan Al Nahayan , who was the first president of the State of Abu Dhabi and the elder brother of late H.H. Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahayan, the establisher of the United Arab Emirates. Shaikh Shakhbut aim was to build a strong dependent government who provides security and peace to the country.
ADP was formulated with very humble techniques. The very beginning duties were to watch and guard some areas like Ruler’s Palace, markets, banks and also the boats coming from other countries. There were two policemen assigned to each location. There were at that time around 80 policemen.
Coast Guards Unit in ADP was established in 1960 and in 1962 the first batch of Patrols was established. Whereas the first Police Music Band was established in 1963. These are the main steps in the establishment dates of ADP.
3.2.1 ADP Mission and vision
Abu Dhabi Police mission is to work in a cooperative environment to provide a safe and secured society, contains no crimes or other types of law breaking. The society we are seeking is stable and insures to keep the public’s rights.
Its vision is to set up a professional and effective police staff whose main goal is to keep the community safe and free if crimes and to spread confidence among people. They are also seeking to build an efficient organisation, concerned with motivating and training. It supports learning and new technologies.
3.2.2 Demographic correlates
The Emirates of Abu Dhabi is considered the largest Emirates in the UAE, and the capital. Its area is around 67,340 square kilometres, which is 86.7% of the Emirates’ total area.
The UAE population is estimated to 2.94 million, with a growth rate of 6.5%, while Abu Dhabi population is estimated to be 1.5 million as of statistics in 2006, see table of Abu Dhabi Population beneath.
The Emirates citizens are contribute around 20% only of the UAE population, whereas the rest are coming from the other Arab countries, India, the Far East, Europe and other countries. Abu Dhabi population is predicted to grow to reach 3.1 million in 2013. This growth in population in the United Arab Emirates is due to the massive economic, trade and other investments developments. The UAE has become a famous tourism destination.
2001 |
2006 |
2010 |
|
Abu Dhabi Municipality |
|||
Urban |
530,558 |
683,531 |
817,421 |
Rural |
141,076 |
177,415 |
212,168 |
Al Ain Municipality |
|||
Urban |
258,292 |
320,051 |
382,742 |
Rural |
122,919 |
154,370 |
184,609 |
Western Region |
102,601 |
115,467 |
138,085 |
Islands |
14,808 |
12,657 |
15,136 |
Total |
1,170,254 |
1,463,491 |
1,750,161 |
Table 1: Abu Dhabi Population (2001-10)
3.2.3 ADP organizational structure
According to the Change plan, which is mentioned later in this chapter, the organisation structure of Abu Dhabi Police has been changed. Hence, lots of departments were established in order to satisfy the developments happened in the country during the past years. The new organisation structure consists of:
- General Department of Security and Borders Affairs.
- General Department of Central Operations.
- General Department of Police Operations.
- General Department of Installations Protection,
- General Department of Human Resources.
- General Department of Finance and Services.
The general departments hold (27) departments and (4) directorates:
- Security Information Department.
- Divan Department.
- Strategy and Performance Development Department.
(2 charts to be inserted)
3.2.4 ADP policies
Abu Dhabi Police policies are set up on finding problems in local policing and solving it. In fact their policies are based on problem solving strategy, in order to continuously improve performance and quality service to achieve their main goal which is insuring safety and security for community and diminish the crimes.
Local policing is supporting decision making and resources allocating, whereas Headquarters departments and sections are sustaining local policing through dedicated services and consultation. Also it emphasizes on community services through the improvement of their strategies, policies and strategy’s standards and supervises the outcomes and performance progress.
3.2.5 Services and procedures
In order to emphasise cooperation strategy, Abu Dhabi Police has established a service for reporting accidents and crimes that may or had occurred. They had published their telephone numbers to make it easier for the people to find it. People can even report on missing things or people via Internet or newspaper. As they have an advanced web site which enable the citizens to interact with the police. Through this step, they are emphasizing people to cooperate with them and to trust them.
Abu Dhabi Police also includes traffic and vehicle licensing. They are responsible of granting driving licenses and checking the state of the vehicles and its safety quality. Also they provide instant help in case of car accidents or car break down, as there are many police patrols all over the city streets. A person can perform lot of services online, like registering new vehicle, apply for a new driving license or a replacement for a lost one, renewing the licenses, inquire about the fines or any other information and also pay the fines. Furthermore, the made special section for recruitment and applying for jobs.
ADP has supplied toll free numbers for reporting or providing suggestions. In addition to the Call Back Service. They are well-known to the Follow Up System used.
3.2.6 Security awareness
After implementing new strategies and the amazing changes applied to the ADP management, the new approach focuses on involving the community with their processes. This style will develop security awareness among the people and therefore will encourage them to participate with the police to fight crimes and preventing them. With the assistance of the local community, the police’s duties become easier to perform since this cooperation aids them in dealing with the community and understand their needs and problems. Therefore the police will be more capable of facing crimes and validating secured community.
Continuous communication between ADP and their local community supports security awareness among the society and calls the attention that security is every person’s responsibility.
3.2.7 Innovation strategies
ADP has realized that in order to apply a good change strategy, the computer and technology systems should be improved. Applying new techniques to the Police departments is essential to help in investigation services and problem solving. That’s why they asked the aid of other developed police systems worldwide, like the British systems.
ADP has installed advanced databases to keep their data organized and well managed to keep track of the data and the ease of getting them.
Through researches it has been found that a very famous innovation in police management field was the Compstst system, which is the computer comparison statistics that was applied in the New York City in the 1990s by former Commissioner William Bratton. Compstat is an interesting model of applying new techniques to the police systems.
Following are the technical tools and systems supplied in the ADP:
- Uniform Criminal Information System:
The objectives of this system are:
The accomplishment of state of art up to date information technology helped in increasing the efficiency of control and detection. There was a focus on building a balanced database connected all over the country putting into consideration the confidentiality of such database. Thus, providing security for such information is very critical to support those people who are responsible for decision-making. Indeed the current information technology in Abu Dhabi police have the biggest benefits in a way it speeds up the works accomplishment and track them in the fastest manner which derived their performance to the highest level. Similar to other sectors worldwide information technology is the most important source which provides up to date statistics and diagrams for the maximum use of security strategy. Moreover, such system makes available the best notable services for the individuals in the society in order to protect their rights.
Some of its features:
The program used in Abu Dhabi police is considered to be the first ever system amongst the Arab countries with many characteristics such as Ease of use, the system is inclusive in its performance, and it always accepts modern customization and development in the future. This system is built amazingly in away that it could be linked with all the governmental sectors around the country. The integrated programs in the system are developed by the most talented programmers in the region. They accepts most formats such as personal photographs, document saving, fingerprints, audio and video of any source. All the mentioned features and others lead Abu Dhabi police to become the pioneer and reference to many countries in the Arab world.
Figure 1: Uniform Information Systems
- The Eye Scan System:
Abu Dhabi police General headquarters took the decision to implement a private system for eye scan as a part of the information technology innovation – See Figure 2 below-. This system is implemented in all deportation centers and country land, sea, and air exits. It depends on the mechanism of taking the photo of the eye’s iris to have the most precise and accurate results amongst most critical identification techniques. This is due to several reasons in which the human eye iris is stable with no change at one year of age until death.
The eye scan system is very sophisticated to take the eye iris pictures and save them in less than 2 seconds and then encrypt them into symbols in order not to be manipulated or imitated. This system has the capability to identify the frequent daily traffic, and is considered among the most critical system since it does not get affected by any surgeries or contact lenses or lenses colors and is sanitized to be used easily, accurately and ultimately without any harmful radiation.
Figure 2: Eye Scan System
The Advantages of the Eye Scan Technique:
Unique:
In comparison with DNA the information extracted from the eye scan technology is much more loaded with generic information. One person’s results do not have any matching with anyone else’s and without any overlapping all over the earth. Moreover, it is also proven that the results of the right eye are different from the left eye of the same person in which it concludes that there are no two people having the same eye scan.
It cannot be affected:
The eye scan technology does not get affected by the Person’s age, surgeries, disease, eyes color, contacts medical or sunglasses. Unlike finger prints the eyes scan does not wear out because it is well protected by cornea and is very quick more than 500000 comparisons per second. Also, according to proven studies scientifically the usage of the eye scan technology is very hygienic and uses an ordinary video technology without any radiation, so there is no chance to transmit disease among the people using the system. The results are perfect since it needs a living eye and any photos or video cannot succeed.
- The closed televised surveillance system
This system consists of monitoring station through televisions located in what is called operation theatre; all are belonging to Abu Dhabi police headquarters operating through 96 cameras installed in 48 crossroads.
The connections of these cameras are of fibre optics type to monitor through central monitoring in the traffic light control centre belonging to Abu Dhabi municipality. The idea behind this is to make use of the current municipality’s system and transfer live images of the 96 cameras to the operation theatre of the police. This ensures that the security monitoring of the police in the operation theatre are done continuously through the connected television monitoring by police men.
- The Patrol Mechanical Information System
Abu Dhabi police traffic and patrol directorate is the only headquarter in the Gulf region that uses The Patrol Mechanical Information System. These are computer machines that are installed and available in the police cars and motorcycles which give the police the ability to extract any information about any vehicle such as the owner information and whither there are any penalties or demands. Also, through the usage of (GPRS-GSM) these systems are able to give instant tickets through a wireless transmission. Add on that, the ability of the policeman to extract any related vehicle information without going back to centralized operations.
Figure 3: The Patrol Mechanical Information System
- Mechanical Alarm System
Mechanical Alarm System is a database that enables the employee to access information at very high accuracy and speed. It contains mechanical alarm service subscribers and is capable to check the subscribed people’s subscription and save/document the important information about the patrol activities, alarm occurrences and incidents of the maintenance.
This database makes available the subscribers names to the mechanical alarm service along with the historical records of each subscriber’s procedures. Also, the system is well built in away that it manages users and gives necessary protection and speed to all parts in the system. Its mechanical subscriptions manage the establishment of confidential and secured lists which provide the statistics necessary to support the decision-makers.
3.3 The Need for Organizational Change
As mentioned previously, there has been a huge expand in The Emirates population in the last years, and this expansion is subject to grow. Though, with this boom of tourists and expatriates coming to the country, there should strict and special rules to control the country and to cover all the required security needs in the Emirates of Abu Dhabi and the whole country. Therefore Abu Dhabi Police had to develop new organizational plan and to improve its performance in order to walk along with the cultural, economic, technological growth in the country.
Along with the boomed population and the foreigners’ presence, ADP had to improve its policing system and come up with new strategies to replace the old traditional system existed before.
With the old system and the main problem of population and society, the following sub-problems had aroused:
- Very advanced technologies rapidly came into the country. Moreover, trading and drug crimes took place.
- As per the economic boom, there has been an increase of money laundering.
- Foreign societies had been noticed and the new generation went far of the true religion of Islam which orders Muslims to do good things and stay away of crimes or any harmful or wrong actions.
- Family relations started to get weak and disconnected as it used to be.
For these reasons ADP should have to change their traditional rules in order to improve their performance and to avoid crime distribution.
3.4 The goals of Organizational Change
The organisational change had focused on:
- Decreasing crime rate
- Improving the performance of ADP departments and creating new sections to support the change and train staff. Also implementing Research & Studies department to search for new problems and find solutions for them.
- Decreasing the gap between police and society and improve relations between them.
- Keep the community safe and peaceful place to live.
- Protect human rights.
These were some of the goals that should be achieved with the change plan.
