“Where
is necessity, there is will”
Police
and media, the two most recognized public service communities are playing
conflicting role between each other since the beginning. Police in one hand is protecting the data for
the protection of people and ensuring data security, on the other hand media is
revealing them for to the people to ensure their information right. A strategic
alliance between these information giants could be the best fit by ensuring
their mutual benefit and serving the public.
Intention: why
integration
It is
known from the long time that police and journalists are working for the same
purpose but focusing on two opposite direction. Both the parties use their own
sources to collect information or sometimes in some countries they sale
information to each other violating their own institutional rule. Both the
parties are employing a large amount of people and money in collecting and
sourcing such information and both of them are conflicting with each other to
get an early hand on this. The only way to eradicate this conflict is by
developing trust (Handy, 1995) among them and sharing information among each
other (Liu & Chetal, 2005). Therefore as representative of police we have
decided to develop a mutual collaborative platform with media industry by
developing a virtual information center (Strader, Lin & Shaw, 1998) to have
more control and simultaneous supply of information and ensure a win-win for
both the parties. So our mission is to develop
The
Negotiated terms: what is the plan
When
building a virtual collaborative platform for Police and Media, it is obvious
that the main issue you might face is about the direction of the project. Which
goals the project is intended to serve? Which direction shall we go towards?
Which rules should we define in order to shape the concept? We strongly focused
on these issues and questions when negotiating virtually with the Media team.
We
eventually came to the conclusion that considering the amount of requirements
that each part had, but also considering the complexity of the project itself,
we needed to develop a comprehensive list of rules that would ensure the
functioning of the platform, and fix the possibilities and duties for both
Police and Media.
After
several weeks of negotiation online, each part brought a significant amount of
requirements that he wanted to insert in the rules list and that would
potentially better serve its own interests: there was 15 demands from police
and 10 demands from Media. Through an intense and complicated bargaining
process, we combine, amend and gather all these demands in order to come up
with a list of 19 negotiated terms: a summary of the rules that are critical to
the efficiency of the project and that would be considered as the backbone of
the virtual platform.
Even
though it is a very formal to state in our blog this exhaustive and detailed
list, we believe that it is essential to go through and explain these majors
points in order to get a precise understanding of the Police and Media
collaborative platform. We consider the following points as the most important
details of the platform:
Point 1: The cost Sharing System
During
the installation period (creation of the server and technical set up), Police
will take in charge 70% of the costs, while Media will only pay 30% of these
costs. However, we believe that the Police costs will be reduced by the
government rebates and advantages, and will decrease real cost from 70% to 45%.
During the operation period, costs will be equally split between the two parts
(50%-50%).
Point 2: The 10 years Track record
For
each case, Police wants to make sure the reporters or the Media employees that
will be involved are clean and safe. For that matter, any Media person will
have to provide a 10 years tax file records and a statement of his criminal
background, in order to assess whether the person has a link with Mafia or
criminal organization.
Point 3: Use of Media source
Police
will have the right to use any Media source at any moment during the
operations.
Point 4: Police Information update
Since
it is very important to achieve a high level of efficiency in this project, we
agreed on the fact that Police will have to update information immediately
after reception.
Point 5: Permission Layer and Permission
Rapidity
Police
has a strong position in this project. It supervises the permission levels and
decides whether or not Media can cover a case. Media should get the permission
of Police before covering any news from High Layers. However, Police must
guarantee a fast decision for the permission.
Point 6: Single case Access permission
Since
every case is different, permission for the Media coverage is only valid for
one single case. Each new case will require a new permission.
Point 7: Server Location
For
safety reasons, we decided that the Information center Server will be host in
the Police headquarter. The back-up server will be located in the Media
association office.
Point 8: Server maintenance
Each
part will take in charge the cost of maintenance for its own system. Police will
finance the Information System server maintenance, while Media will take in
charge the Back-up system costs.
Point 9: Importance of the Information
level
As we
previously said, Police has a leading power in this project. We designed a 5
levels system to assess the importance of each case, and Police will decide the
importance of each case, according to its information and its understanding of
the case.
Point 10: Low Levels coverage
Any
case that is considered as a « Low level case » will be freely covered
by Media. With this rule, we aim at providing strong coverage efficiency for
cases that are less risky.
Point 11: Information access and
modification
Both
Police and Media have the right to access and input data on the system, but
only Police can modify information and data. However, for data modification,
Police should have one level up verification and provide reasonable reason to
Media.
Point 12: the « National
Security » rule
Police
has the right to reject or to block the coverage of any case at any level under
one special condition: a National security matter. If the rejection is not a
national security matter, Media will have the right to publish the news.
Point 13: Responsibility of media
If
Media provides any wrong data or information, Media will be fully responsible
for the mistake.
Point 14: Media data Security
Responsibility
Media
will be responsible for the security of data they provide.
Point 15: Control of Information access
Police
will be informed every time someone is accessing the data. This information
will be sent to the Responsible officer at police department.
Point 16: Use of Instant Messenger
We
created an Instant Messenger system that will be aimed at improving the
efficiency of the Police/Media collaboration. Each media person will install
this IM application on his mobile phone and must not switch off the IM without
the permission of the Police Department. The idea is to make Media reporters
accessible anytime and to enhance the exchange of information.
Point 17: Future issues
There
will be a different unit to share open information. Where media can share
information about any probable future issues. If Police finds out that the
media person had the information of a future incident beforehand but did not
share it on the special platform, he will be accused for that and fully
responsible.
Point 18: Referral to supervisor
Police
will assign a supervisor to each Media team, and Media will have to refer to
him about any issue or problem.
Point 19: Case- based team
We
know that each case is different. For that reason, we decided that teams will
be changed and designed according to the specificity of each case, its location
and its level of importance.
Also,
we discussed a lot another rule proposed by Police and that Media rejected.
This rule was asking that « a reporter should not leave a job in the
middle of a case ». For practical reasons, Media asked us to remove this
rule: since the mobility of journalists and reporters is important, it is
difficult for them to guarantee such a thing. However we reached the agreement
that every time a reporter would leave his job in the middle of a case, Media
association should deal with the handover in advance and make sure that the
reporter will not share any information about this case with the public. If
there is any leak, reporter will be accused for that.
This
list of rules has shaped our project but above all, our collaborative
experience. Reaching agreements on each requirement, accepting to remove some
demands, and narrow our requirements is a quite tricky process. In the last
part of our blog, we will tackle the conflicts that we faced during this
collaboration, and also the Knowledge management that we tried to implement in
our project.
Process: how
to perform
Knowledge
Management
Knowledge
Management can enable effective design and emergence of virtual organizations,
virtual teams and virtual communities (Malhotra, 2000). We know that A process
to enable people to develop a set of practices to create, capture, share &
use knowledge to advance organizational goals and here we are focused on
developing explicit organizational knowledge. We have differentiated our
knowledge management policy in three segments:
<!--[if !supportLists]-->Ø <!--[endif]-->Level of usage
<!--[if !supportLists]-->Ø <!--[endif]-->External and open source usage
<!--[if !supportLists]-->Ø <!--[endif]-->Archiving
Level of usage
Here
the information is organized in five levels to ensure the usage and control.
Moving to each level up in the ladder will increase the control over the
information and reduce the restriction on media. In the green level the
information is open to share without any permission. Light green level requires
permission from one step senior of the reporting journalist. Yellow level
information is published with mutual decision of the journalist and respective
police officer based on importance and intensity of the information against the
need for publication. Orange level is the publishable top priority information
what is decided by both media and police head together. The red level of
information is the top priority that cannot be revealed because national
security issue or other topmost important issue for solving case.
External and open source usage:
This
section is open for open information sharing and collecting. This section also
has three parts. In the first past, there is an open portal for sharing
information about probable future cases what should come into the
consideration. Second section is for sharing information from the mass people
and anyone can provide any information keeping their identity secret. Third
portal is the link of all news media where people can log in and get the
updated news.
Information archiving:
Last
part of the knowledge management is focused on proper storage of the
information. The traditional record
keeping should be replaced with digitalization and being a click away to
retrieve it. As mentioned earlier there will be a main server in police
headquarter to capture all the information entering into the system and that
will be backed up by another server from media association office. It is
important for knowledge management because one of the most important parts of
knowledge management is to store and control the secure use of information.
Legal
Obligation
Virtual Team
Performance
How police and media can work together in the virtual team is been discussed and analyzed in our practical orientation with the virtual team and we have developed three aspects for such virtual team performance:
How police and media can work together in the virtual team is been discussed and analyzed in our practical orientation with the virtual team and we have developed three aspects for such virtual team performance:
<!--[if !supportLists]-->v <!--[endif]-->Team development
<!--[if !supportLists]-->v <!--[endif]-->Team creativity
<!--[if !supportLists]-->v <!--[endif]-->Team interaction
Team development
Team
development process can be done based on two categories; task related and
socio-emotional (Siebdrat, Hoegl & Ernst, 2009) and we are focused on the
task related process of team development is our project. Different police
officer and journalists from different media company will work is different
cases simultaneously. They will develop an intra and intra team culture in the
virtual world. For example: If there is five police officer is working in three
different cases and six journalists from three media company is covering that
news they can formulate a cross teaming culture and such develop better
relationship among each other.
Team creativity
Earlier
a police officer or more from the similar area tried to solve a case but now
the scenario will be different. Now they shall have a bigger team with the
support from media and those media people are coving diversified stories and
have different additional knowledge.
Those knowledge sharing might not increase
creativity of a single person but it will develop creativity and performance
outcome of the team as a whole with the support of better and intense
communication (Leenders, Engelen & Kratzer, 2003). Study says that when
people works from different location together that increases the creativity.
Moreover, working with diversified people will increase their creativity as
well and having insights from previous different cases from media will help us
as police to enhance our vision to solve our case.
Team interaction
Information
technology has developed substantively over the last two decades and
development growth is remarkable in last few years with more convenient access
of mobile communication devices. Writing long email is now replacing with live
voice and video chat with the advancement of 4th generation network
module. In the bus, train or even on the streets people are moving with 24/7
accessible and traceable communicating devices. For our virtual platform, we
also want to develop an intranet among the police stations and media offices
for communication. Moreover, we want to develop a separate mobile application
for the registered police officers and media staffs to track and communicate
with the team members at any time and formulate a group chat among each other.
Conflicts and
collaboration
During
the process of negotiate with media, we have some task conflicts. From the
research of Carsten K. W. De Dreu and Laurie R. Weingart, it showed that
examples of task conflict are conflicts about the distribution of resources,
procedures and policies, and judgments and interpretation of facts. And every
community will focus on their own parts and interests, and want other
communities to compromise. Precisely because of this, we have the different
views about our common projects. So in order to solve these conflicts, we
choose different negotiation styles in different steps to increase our
collaboration. In the first step, when we discussed this project, our
team-police gave 15 points to support and protect our own interests, and when
media saw that they agreed with our these points. In this step, our team
competed with media and wined this step, and they showed compromise. But in
second step, media had different points and wanted to modify our points, and
they gave 10 points to support their own interests. So in third step, we should
discuss these 25 points and reach the consensus about our project. During the
process of discussing our different points, we chose to collaborate our points.
Firstly, we found our common interests, and then we discussed and modified our
different points. Finally, we chose 19 points as our common points about this
virtual platform to support police and media’s interests. So solving the
conflicts should based on different steps.
Virtual
organizing
By
the research, we can know that virtual organizing has three vectors (customer
interaction, asset configuration and knowledge leverage) and three stages.
About our team virtual project, it just includes two vectors, so I will focus
to introduce these two vectors. Concerning customer interaction, our virtual
platform not just bring service to police and media, it also provide
information to public. Public is the customer of this platform and have right
to know, check and upload the newest information. By this platform, it could
provide remote experience of products and services to public, because public
could check the information that they want to know and upload the newest
information. When the police, media and public upload the information in this
platform, they could learn the different thinking models and enhance their
creativity, which is their stage three. Concerning knowledge leverage, police
and media have different knowledge backgrounds, and when they share their
information, which means the knowledge integration and create the new values to
these two communities. For the stage one, this platform is the new product and
could bring many new information to these two communities, and stage two, this
platform could increase the police’s working efficiency and decrease their
working time and save costs, which could bring economic values to police, and
stage three, it is the information integration, and police and media will
increase their own creativity by their discussion and sharing information.
Benefits of
all stakeholders
Common benefits
Why
the police and media want to build this platform? - Because it could bring
several benefits to them. For this platform, it just focuses how to share the
information, so the benefits also focus the information. Firstly, it could
share the newest and previous information with each other. This platform is the
center of information, police and media could upload all information in it. For
example, when the country happened a murder case and killed a person, police
and media will go to collect the information, but they focus on different
points like police would collect some information about how to solve this case，and media would collect the information
about the thoughts and feedbacks about the person’s neighbors, friends and
families. So when the police and media upload the information to the platform,
police could use these feedbacks from the neighbors and know some people have
possible to do murder. Secondly, they could check the information anytime.
Policemen and journalists could download the related apps about this platform,
and when they want to check the information that they want to know, they could
check it by their smartphone in anytime and any places. Thirdly, they could
grasp the latest data. All the information will upload in the platform, which
means police and media could grasp them include the latest information.
Benefits of government
Government
is the dominant force in our country and our society, so it has rights to
obtain all information and know the process of police and media. The first
benefit is control the process of case. For example, when the country happened
a new robbery case, government could check the detailed information about this
case and know the process of solving this case by police, and when the police
met a problem like lack of resources, government could bring some supports to
police as soon as possible, and help the police. Secondly, government knows how
to guide the action. Government is the central of power and authority, so when
the country happened a new case, government always should play the important
role in it like guiding the police and giving some suggestions to them.
Benefits of public
All
communities should service the public and meet their demands, so public also
have rights to use this platform. When they use this platform, they could check
the basic information that they want to know like they want to know the news
about murder case, they could search the key words in this platform and check
all the basic information about the murder case. Then this platform ensures the
public’s right to know the truth. In China, it has a law regulation that public
has the right to know all the information. So this platform could ensure the
public right and make them feel respected by the government, police and media.
And this platform could make police and media receive the good reputation from
public and obtain the public’s support.
Benefits of police (compare with real
platform)
Our
team’s role is police, so we should focus the benefits that police could obtain
from this virtual platform. And these benefits could not obtain from the real
platform. Firstly, it is the quickly information sharing platform. Compared
with real platform, virtual platform could quickly upload the newest
information in this platform and quickly sharing this information. Secondly,
media and police could mutual assistant with each other. By this platform,
police and media will upload their information with the new case, which means
police could use some useful information from media, and media could know which
type of information will helpful to police. So it builds a mutual assistant and
makes a good relationship with each other. Thirdly, it could save the police’s
cost. Building this platform, police and media will share these costs about
build this platform, so it could save the police’s cost compared with just the
police build this platform. Fourthly, it could build the harmonious relation
with public. Public will check the information that they want to know in this
platform, and check some information uploaded by police. And the public could
know the police’s detailed work and know the police spare no effort to solve
the case. When public know these information, they will trust police and
believe they service the public, and then public will support the police’s
work. Fifthly, it could increase the cases-solving rate. From this platform,
police collects all the useful information to solve the case and it could save
their time and energy, and then improve their work efficiency. Sixthly, it
could improve the policemen’s creativity. During the process of sharing
information, police could know the journalists’ working style and thinking
models. And when they discuss the information with media, they will share their
own thoughts and learn something from others. Seventhly, it could improve
police’s time management. Collecting all information by this platform,
policemen could save their time and energy, which means they have more time and
energy to arrange their other work and other tasks. And it will improve their
ability to manage their own time.
Conclusion
Police forces across the world are hoping to develop a better relationship with media and police chief of NYPD has also tried to say the same thing in his interview with ABC news. We just need a proper platform to come together to find and share our ideas and common interests. A virtual data center is not only medium of information sharing or information protection module, rather it is a medium of collaboration and knowledge sharing using the beauty of technological advancement and above all it is the platform to provide best and most efficient service to mass level people.
References:
Liu,
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and Technology, Volume 56, Issue 3, pages 283–298, February 2005.
Strader,
T. J., Lin, F. R., and Shaw, M. J., “Information infrastructure for electronic
virtual organization management”, Decision Support Systems, Volume 23, Issue 1,
Pages 75–94, May 1998.
Malhotra,
Y., “Knowledge management and virtual organizations”, Idea Group Publishing,
2000.
Siebdrat,
F., Hoegl and M., Ernst, H., “How to manage virtual teams”, MITSloan Manahement
Review, Volume 50, Number 4, Summer 2009
Handy,
C., “Trust and the virtual organization”, Harvard Business Review, May-June
1995
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R. A. J., Engelen, J. M. L., and Kratzer, J, “Virtuality, communication, and
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