Pilot survey on Law Enforcement Agencies’ Training Needs on Supply Chain Security was carried out by Dr. Toni Männistö of CBRA, in Baku, 28-29 April, 2015.

We are pleased to announce that the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, UNODC, was kind enough to allow us to carry a pilot survey this week on Law Enforcement Agencies’ Training Needs on Supply Chain Security, as part of the Networking of the Law Enforcement Training Institutions “LE TrainNet” –meeting held in Baku, Azerbaijan, 28-29 April, 2015. This survey gathers information to determine what training materials need to be developed to help relevant law enforcement agencies (police, customs etc.) to better fight crime in the context of international supply chains (= combines global trading, sourcing, transport, distribution, retail and reverse logistics systems). The survey is administered by the Cross-border Research Association (www.cross-border.org ) and INTERPOL (www.interpol.int ), as part of the FP7-CORE project (www.coreproject.eu ), which seeks to find cost-effective, sustainable ways to prevent criminal networks from exploiting the global supply chain.

In this LEA training needs –blog, we share some details on the survey questions. Later this spring we will have another blog on the survey outcomes. We have also preliminary plans to repeat the survey, possibly an enhanced version of it, with our LEA stakeholders in Europe and globally (by email, or surveymonkey; possibly in multiple languages, to be determined later).

And here we go – five survey questions in total (all are closed questions with five reply options, in the basic style: no-low-some-high- don´t know; and in each question there is a note to “add important items which were missing”).

Question 1. How useful would it be for your organization to access new and enhanced training materials with regard to the following crime areas?

The list of crime areas covers some 17 typical supply chain crime types of interest for police and/or customs. Examples of the sub-questions include: trafficking and other crime with “normal consumer products” (e.g. cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, and vehicles); trafficking in any counterfeit products; environmental crime (e.g waste trafficking and illicit e-waste trade); terrorist groups exploiting the supply chain; and facilitating crime (e.g corruption and cybercrime).

Question 2. How useful is it for your organization to learn about advancements in the following areas of supply chain security methods, tools, programs and datasets?

Here we crafted a broad list of 19 security methods, tools, programs and datasets – most of them under development in the FP7-project CORE. Examples of the sub-questions include: risk assessment and profiling methods; image capture and analysis tools (optical, x-ray etc.); track and trace technologies; intra-agency collaboration programs; and various databases both on normal, legal activities in global supply chains (product origin countries, typical trade lanes and transport routes etc.) , as well on illegal activities (crime maps, cybercrime trends etc.)

Question 3. How important do you consider it to be that the new training materials on supply chain security include the following types of content?

This question (and the sub-questions) was built very much on the outcomes of FP7-CORE meeting in Thun, Switzerland (Jan.2015). Part of the 3-day meeting was focused on Supply chain security education and training materials development, and following examples of training content types and categories were explored and rated high among CORE Work package 19 partners (CLECAT, ESC, INTERPOL, IRU, WCO, BMT and CBRA): Case studies on security in global supply chains; Collaborative approaches and best practices; Consequences / negative impacts of illegal activities; Cost-benefit analysis; End-to-end supply chain thinking; Human factors; Multi-disciplinary approaches; and Quantitative / numeric data.

Question 4. Please rate each of the following learning methods, based on how effective you think they are for your law enforcement training activities.

Just like in question 3 above, this question 4 (and sub-questions) is very much based on the collaborative work in “CORE Thun meeting” (Jan.2015). In the survey sheet we ask the effectiveness of following learning methods: Blended learning; Case studies; Classroom lectures; Collaborative problem –based learning; Debates; Demonstrations; e-Learning; Mobile phone learning apps; Modular learning; Practical exercises; Role playing; Serious games; Shadowing / monitoring / learning by observing others; Simulations; and, Textbook reading.

Question 5. How would you assess your expectations with regard to the benefits of new supply chain security training materials for your organization?

The last question of this survey lays out a list of benefits which a layman could expect to follow from enhanced LEA training materials in supply chain security. In essence, the sub-questions here are about better use of organizational resources, and improved outcomes of LEA interventions. More specifically, following sub-questions are listed in the survey: Better use of organizational resources in intelligence; Better use of organizational resources in crime detection; Better use of organizational resources in crime investigations; Improved efficiency in processes & cost reductions; Increase in number of detection of serious offences; Increase in number of seizures of illicit goods; Increase in number of arrests; and, Increase in number of successful prosecutions

Now, before closing this LEA training needs survey -blog, let´s remind ourselves of potential limitations of this type of research approach. Here I quote two law enforcement experts who were kind enough to advise us during the survey development process. The first expert made the following point: “The problem with this kind of questionnaire is that the replies are easy but may not ultimately tell you anything. Asking someone how useful a pressure cooker would be for their kitchen would attract a positive response but they might not need it or be able to use it or afford it.” And the second expert complemented on that by notifying that : “Having been involved in several complicated questionnaires (in law enforcement) I have experienced that for quite some questions people did not provide an answer explaining that they were not in the position to answer that or that it was beyond their scope of expertise, so barking to the wrong trees.” Now, we hope to be able to avoid these typical ´survey-pitfalls´ – after all, our survey-exercise is about focused new training materials in supply chain security for the tangible benefit of LEAs; and the survey-audience is made of the leading experts in LEA training from around the world – but, let’s wait to see what kind of response data is flowing in… J