The interim government has decided to launch a shortcode along with the police hotline service aiming to prevent violence against women.
This is one of the four government initiatives to digitise the police services, said a press release of Chief Adviser’s Press Wing.
Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser on Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, said the government has undertaken the work of creating a Police Command App to properly conduct all types of police activities of the Bangladesh Police and ensure the security of the internal communication system.
He said many modernisation works have also been started, including incident tracking software for complaint management, shortcode and online General Diary (GD) to prevent violence against women, and filing cases or first information reports (FIRs) online or through shortcodes.
Taiyeb said any complaint about violence against women can be submitted by dialing 333 by adding another 3 to the current national helpline 333 or by calling 333 and going to the service option and pressing 3, it will be forwarded to the police call centre.
The government has planned to appoint 100 percent female staff in the call centre so that women feel free to file complaints, he added.
Since the 999 life-saving SOS service and the process of increasing its call centre capacity is time-consuming, this 3333 service is not being included in 999 right now, the special assistant said.
In addition, he said, the government is considering recruiting 100% female staff as the receivers of the 3333 in call centre.
"Changes are also being brought in the method of filing general diaries online. An online FIR system is being added. In this case, after the profile is downloaded to the call centre, the call will go directly to the concerned police station. Currently, work is being done on the database of phone numbers of police station officials," Taiyeb said.
He said all kinds of technical support will be provided by the ICT Department in implementing the initiatives.
Mentioning that the work of creating a prototype of the police command app has already been completed, the CA special assistant said the work of further developing this application is underway in consultation with the Ministry of Home.
"Currently, police use WhatsApp for internal communication. It wastes a lot of time. Moreover, the risk of information leakage is also very high; any member can copy all the discussions using Artificial Intelligence (AI)," he said.
For this reason, he said, the 'Push to Talk' app is being developed by the Information and Communication Technology Department for police officers, where there will remain effective measures to prevent information leakage, Taiyeb said.
In terms of communication between members of the police force, there will be several levels of officers in the Police Command app, he said, adding that top officers, including the Inspector General of Police (IGP), will be at Tier-1.
The police headquarters and the range DIG and the police superintendent at the district level will be at next stage, he said.
"At final stage, there will be police officers from all the police stations in the country. However, police personnel at the police station level will not be connected to the command app right now," Taiyeb said.
"Currently, WhatsApp and other conventional methods are used for all types of communication when probes are conducted into any allegations or any incident occurs," he said.
The members in charge of the Police Command Centre now remain busy with these tasks all day long, the special assistant said, adding "to bring the entire issue of such communication on one platform, an incident tracking system is being created following the model of the customer management system of mobile companies".
He said all types of message exchanges and communication will be stored in this tracking system, resulting in what steps have been taken in any crime incident will be known through software.
So, Taiyeb said, apart from providing services easily and saving time, the workload of police personnel will also be minimized.
