Police Security Enhancement Via The Usage Of An SMS Gateway In Nairobi

Abstract

An SMS gateway is a telecommunications network facility for sending or receiving Short Message Service (SMS) transmissions to or from a telecommunications network that supports SMS. The main purpose of this study was to get the perception of both the police officers and members of the public in Nairobi on SMS gateway usage for the purpose of enhancing security. The research involved developing and implementing a prototype which permitted SMS communication using mobile phones between the police officers and members of the public. A survey using questionnaire was conducted to access the perceived impacts on both groups’ experiences while using the SMS gateway. The study established that most police officers and members of public owned mobile phones and had long experience on daily SMS usage. Despite this, both groups mostly used face to face communication which was slow, manual and inconvenient to information flow. The study also established that SMS communication between the members of the public and the police officers was very rare. The same case applied to the intra-police SMS communication. Via the developed prototype, members of the public managed to easily send SMS to police stations. The police officers also managed to easily communicate internally via the gateway as well as send SMS to the members of the public. In terms of ease, convenience, speed and user friendliness in the processes of communicating security alerts, the system received high ratings from both groups. Finally future research directions on SMS gateway adoption and usage were discussed.