A Cloud Computing Adoption Model for the South African Police Services (SAPS)

Abstract

Record keeping and safety of dockets in the police stations in South Africa has been identified and reported as a barrier or challenge in finalising some of the court cases. Criminal records are physically stored in hard copies on one site, whereby they cannot be accessible electronically in other locations such as courts, law firms and other police stations. This form of record keeping exposes the criminal records to many risks such as dockets being misplaced, lost or stolen, as they rotate from one unit to another within the station. This leads to withdrawal of cases by the state without proper implementation of justice. An alternative way of storing and sharing information, which eliminates the shortfalls of the current system is needed. Embracing cloud computing for storage of these records can address such challenges. Cloud computing will enable SAPS to store, share and retrieve files from various locations, where sharing of resources is crucial for quick and effective decision-making. Therefore, this study investigates a cloud computing adoption model, which can introduce the benefits of cloud computing in storing, sharing and managing criminal records within the South African Police Service. An interpretive paradigm was adopted for this research, embracing the qualitative research approach.