Public safety leaders face a growing imbalance in their operations. Agencies receive an increasing volume of daily call data with only a limited team to manage it, hindering attempts to develop strategies that improve operational efficiency.
Rising expectations for speed, transparency and accuracy in public safety are also straining agencies’ abilities to deliver timely and effective services. To streamline operations enough to meet them, leaders need to strategically reevaluate priorities, scale organizational capabilities and redistribute resources.
AI has already become a transformative force for leaders in many major industries. The introduction of role-based AI-assisted public safety has created a new way for leaders to transform their strategic approaches to meet operational efficiency goals in this industry as well.
How are public safety agencies losing hours?
Today’s public safety leaders face two strategic obstacles: the significant influx of data passing through dispatch and labor shortages. Both affect the central factor that drives resource optimization within an agency, which is time.
The hours lost due to operational challenges can impact leaders’ abilities to drive efficiencies within agencies. Public safety officers spend 40% of their time writing incident reports, and call handlers spend an average of 70 additional seconds per call on transcription and working through language barriers.
Mahesh Saptharishi, Motorola Solutions’ CTO and executive vice president, highlights the current operations concerns leaders share. “In public safety, time can be the difference between a successful outcome and a tragedy,” he said as part of the launch announcement for Assist Suites, a role-based AI portfolio for public safety solutions.
This statement highlights the potentially severe consequences of losing hours. Reclaiming time is imperative to public safety leaders’ long-term strategies, and AI technologies can be the catalysts that help them regain more hours, promote efficiencies and redistribute resources to improve services.
How does role-based AI help free hours?
Public safety agencies lose hours to various types of tasks, primarily in communication and information processing. The challenge lies in deploying limited resources to address the increasing number of service calls to law enforcement and fire departments.
Call handlers spend nearly half their time verifying information for accuracy, transcribing calls from multiple sources and filtering routine inquiries. Field officers put in as many hours as needed writing incident reports and cross-referencing the information supplied to deliver an accurate response to the situation.
Public safety role-based AI demonstrates how technology can help free up those hours and push agencies toward improved operational efficiency. Various AI tools can perform dedicated tasks, including transcribing and translating calls, isolating important information by keyword and helping to write incident reports.
Dispatch teams can receive and process information more efficiently, and field officers can respond with greater accuracy. AI-assisted technologies can give leaders more time to handle increased volume and improve their public safety services.
What impact does role-based AI have on leadership?
Considering the rising number of risks and threats within urban jurisdictions, public safety leaders are having to reevaluate their operational strategies to become more proactive rather than reactive. Some firefighting services are adopting new technologies to achieve such goals.
Responding to calls faster and more accurately can help mitigate more potential incidents and reduce harm to the public. Under current circumstances, most public safety agencies would not be able to free up the hours required to transition towards that strategy.
That’s where role-based AI can have a direct impact on leadership. One practical example is the White Bear Lake Police Department in Minnesota, which adopted the Assist Suites tools to improve efficiency. The department’s success was highlighted in a testimonial by police sergeant Michael Sellner, who praised the technology’s role in their strategic transition.
Referring to the report-writing tool, he said, “We’ve seen Narrative Assist cut report writing time from an hour down to 15 minutes and Redaction Assist drop video redaction time from 35 hours to just one.” He continued, “The AI features in Motorola Solutions’ Responder Assist Suite allow our officers to stop staring at screens and get back to proactive policing.”
Can role-based AI be a long-term strategic solution for public safety leaders?
Leaders can leverage role-based AI to secure the hours needed to shift towards a proactive service strategy. However, the question remains whether the technology can be a reliable asset in the long term.
Organizations in many industries are implementing AI technologies into their workflows to not only improve efficiency but also leverage its scalable, adaptive and flexible potential to meet their unique needs. Given Assist Suite’s demonstrated ability to support the specific needs of public safety services, a role-based AI platform can be part of a long-term strategic solution.
Public safety leaders seeking to reclaim lost hours due to operational challenges can benefit from implementing role-based AI within their organizations.
