Tardy pace of computerisation has affected Uttar Pradesh police's ability to control, investigate and prevent crime, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report pointed out.
In its report for the year ended March 31, 2008, the CAG has rapped the state police department for defective implementation of the computerisation scheme, due to which no tangible benefits could be received even after twelve years of the scheme having been introduced.
"The computerisation of criminal records in the state police was initiated in 1996 by way of introducing Crime and Criminal Information System (CCIS), which was to be implemented at the district level" and the data so compiled was to be sent to the State Crime Record Bureau (SCRB) at Lucknow for "consolidation of information of all the districts at the state level", the report said.
However, the report has noted with concern that by 2008, "crime data was computerised to the extent of only six per cent when compared with manually prepared data at the state level".
"CCIS was not fully operational even after 12 years of its introduction," the CAG report added.
The CAG has also pointed towards severe lack of coordination within the department, evident from the failure of a number of District Crime Record Bureaus (DCRB) and Government Railway Police (GRP) offices to forward their respective crime data to the State Crime Record Bureau.
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Besides, there has been a high incidence of "erroneous/incomplete and irrelevant data which was useless in crime detection, thus rendering even the partially-captured data as unreliable," the CAG has added.
Moreover, the report has pointed out "all DCRB/GRP offices were to be connected through a network in the CCIS project but that did not happen".
Besides, the CAG said, in 2006, installation of a Common Integrated Police Application (CIPA) software was taken up with the assistance of Hindustan Computers, at an estimated cost of Rs 96 crore.
However, by the year 2008, out of 137 police stations where the hardware was installed, CIPA functioned only in 59 police stations, the report added.
In addition to the above stated lacunae, security of Information Technology assets was not ensured as was evident from absence of stock inventories in DCRB/GRP offices, which "exposed the assets to the risk of misuse/pilferage", the report added.
With pitfalls preventing the state from getting "tangible benefits from the computerisation in the state police department", the CAG has strongly advocated "a comprehensive IT strategy and policy with well-defined roles of all officials".
Besides, it needs to be ensured that data entry of requisite records is done at all police stations and the electronic data is sent from all the districts to the SCRB.
In addition to this, steps should be undertaken for avoiding delay in implementation of CIPA and sufficient trained staff and uninterrupted power supply should be ensured at all police stations so that the software functions without any hindrances, the CAG added.