The Digital Transformation (DT) TIG continues to develop its activities as a platform for exchange on the organisational, technological and legal dimensions of change in law enforcement. On 6 May, the TIG held an online meeting focused on why DT in policing must go beyond technology procurement.

During the meeting, Edwin Delwel—founder of LEOsphere.net, former Dutch police commissioner and former chair of the Digital Workspace TIG —delivered a keynote to the DT TIG examining why digital transformation in policing continues to struggle despite decades of investment in technology.

The presentation argued that many police organisations are still not truly transforming, but instead procuring digital versions of structures and workflows originally designed for paper-based policing.

Using examples from across European law enforcement, the keynote distinguished between digitisation, digitalisation and genuine transformation. While many organisations have modernised tools and introduced mobile systems, relatively few have fundamentally addressed the organisational, legal and governance consequences that modern technology creates.

The presentation identified four major pressure points currently shaping policing transformation efforts across Europe: data quality, regulation, sovereignty and legitimacy.

Particular emphasis was placed on fragmented data environments, legal uncertainty surrounding technologies such as AI and facial recognition, dependence on external vendors and cloud infrastructures, and the growing importance of public and internal legitimacy in technology deployment.

The keynote also stressed that transformation is not primarily a technology issue, but an organisational one. Data governance, leadership, workforce adoption, procurement strategy and accountability structures were presented as more decisive than the technologies themselves.

A central message of the presentation was that technology increasingly forces policing organisations to rethink protocols, decision-making structures, supervision, legal accountability and institutional culture.

Interested stakeholders are invited to join the DT TIG and support responsible digital transformation in law enforcement. Express your interest and join the community via the “Join the Community” form. Follow us on LinkedIn for updates on our latest activities.