The Tayside Police website will be upgraded later this year, with the aim of fostering better links with the community.
At a meeting on Monday, Chief Constable Justine Curran will tell members of the Tayside Joint Police Board that the new site will provide more information and include micro sites for specific events or initiatives.
She explained, “A redesign of the force website will be introduced in 2010. With respect to promoting community knowledge and understanding of what’s happening in smaller neighbourhood areas, the public will be able to identify their community officer/team and select opportunities for contact through a new ‘Your Community’ area … This will provide a major mechanism for delivering up-to-date data and information.”
Ms Curran added, “The website will support the use of ‘micro sites’ for specific areas or time-limited initiatives for example, allowing a T in the Park site to be scheduled to start and end on set dates, or to publish the Chief Constable’s annual report at a set time and date automatically.
“It supports alternative styles to present fr example, youth-focused micro sites.”
The site will also offer greater accessibility for people with sight or hearing impairment and will provide some rudimentary language functionality or translation services.
Another way in which Tayside Police intends to improve its interaction with the public is through “crime mapping”.
Ms Curran stated, “As part of the public-facing data project the force will provide the public with meaningful information regarding their local neighbourhood, such as comparative crime information and force performance results, and will also highlight local activities within their communities.
“This is part of the drive towards mapping force geographical communities to data zones, which not only provides the force with useful information regarding demographics of areas, but also allows the force to convert this into the form of ‘number of crimes per 1000 of population’ for presentation to the public, leading to direct comparison between areas.”