New Zealand Police: OnDuty App

For over 10 years, Smudge has partnered with New Zealand Police to design and build groundbreaking software that equips frontline officers to make our communities safer.

In 2014, we started working with the Police on an iOS app called OnDuty. This app is the software cornerstone of a strategy to improve frontline policing by enabling officers to access intelligence in the field.

Before the Police were equipped with OnDuty, officers:

• Found accessing important information slow and inefficient in the field
• Often had limited understanding of critical information when attending a scene/situation
• Spent too much time at the station completing paperwork.

A collaborative user-centric design process

Building an app for more than 10,000 officers working in a diverse, unpredictable operational environment meant the design had to be fit for purpose. We embarked on a collaborative, user-centric design process with the New Zealand Police.

This included:

• Field research and ride-alongs with frontline officers
• Workshops involving a range of roles
• Scenario days experiencing and exploring different use cases
• Pilot programmes and user testing in the field.

Transformational access to intelligence in the field

Directly connected to the National Intelligence Application (NIA), OnDuty enables frontline Police to use their phones to access important information and complete formal paperwork in the field.

OnDuty is part of a fully integrated ecosystem of software. Officers can move seamlessly between looking up information, completing paperwork online, making notes, and improving their situational awareness, all while sharing their location in near real-time. This ecosystem has transformed the way Police staff collect, access, and act on information.

Before OnDuty existed, officers used radios for queries

Ex-Supt. Rob Cochrane explains: "We had to wait for a channel to become available and ask someone at the communications centre to look up a query. We now provide that capability when the officers need it, in a form that's really consumable through their phone.”

Since its roll out OnDuty has handled over 110 million queries. The app has freed up Police communications centres, allowing staff to focus on other important demands.

Officers can access data on vehicles, people and locations

One of the core features of OnDuty is the ability for officers to search for intelligence on people, drivers, vehicles and locations anytime, from anywhere.

Supt. Mark Donaldson explains “With real-time access to critical information, our staff make better decisions and stay safer. OnDuty enables accurate, efficient data collection and ensures it’s accessible across the organisation.”

Seamless data-sharing across government agencies

OnDuty allows New Zealand Police to share reports with other agencies recorded through the app. For example, details of completed traffic crash reports are immediately made available to NZTA. Before Police had OnDuty, this often used to take several days.

Supt. Mark Donaldson confirms : “OnDuty’s real strength is enabling staff to view, collect, and share policing information anywhere in the field. It supports true mobility and helps us work with communities to keep them safe, delivering benefits across NZ Police.”

500,000 hours freed up from admin

OnDuty has since been deployed to over 10,000 staff and is part of a suite of apps that save New Zealand Police over 500,000 hours every year. An early study showed Police are saving 30 minutes per shift per member.

At Smudge we love work that has a positive impact on society, and the projects we do with New Zealand Police squarely align to our mission of solving operational problems with technology that have a positive impact for businesses, people and communities.

Empower your field teams

If you’d like to empower your frontline team and make it easy for them to report back live from the field, talk to us. We’d love to help.