The New Zealand Police force has chosen Vodafone New Zealand as its partner for mobile communications in a 10-year, fully-outsourced deal.
From April this year, Vodafone New Zealand will deliver customised mobile services and smartphones to NZ Police, enabling more than 6,000 frontline response, investigation and community Police officers to securely access information about suspects, vehicles and locations while on the move. Almost 4,000 of these officers who need to undertake more complex data entry as part of their job will also be provided with a tablet.
Use of the devices will mean frontline staff gain 30 minutes productivity per shift, which equates to approximately 520,000 hours each year – the equivalent of about 345 frontline officers. The expected time savings of 30 minutes per officer per shift will be reinvested into preventative policing activities. 
The initial cost of the rollout is NZ$4.3m (£2.4m). Over the next 10 years, New Zealand Police will spend NZ$159m to fund the technology rollout. Over the same period, the move is expected to provide New Zealand Police with productivity benefits of NZ$304.8m. These benefits were identified by New Zealand Police during an 11-month trial involving more than 100 frontline officers in four Police districts.
New Zealand Police Commissioner Peter Marshall said: “We believe greater use of modern technology is the way of the future; it’s common sense, and will ensure officers can remain on the frontline rather than returning to stations to complete paperwork.”
