You'd think, if someone is managing a group of detectives, they would be regularly discussing progress on their cases
I would say not. They should stop trying to micromanage detectives and their work flows, as that is only to frustrate them.
Detectives are senior mental workers much like writers, or designers in certain engineering, or art fields.
They are bound to spend a lot of time on the clock making no progress at all, And in addition spend a lot of time thinking while not on the clock, in the shower, etc, the subconcious organizes thoughts when conditions are right -- which can be attributable to 90% of the progress you ever can even get. Which kind of also means that having them log hours or monitoring their computer usage as some kind of proxy to amount of work done, is also complete bullshit. Especially for any detectives who may have to go out into the field and look at places to stimulate their intuitive senses sufficiently to come back and make progress. There are necessary activities for thought workers which can't be categorized as work by corporate standards, but which are necessary to the process. Including being lazy and procrastinating from time to time. The keyjamming is not necessarily a flaw - for all we know they may be a high-performing detective within a system that has ignorant executive management and stupid policies.
One does not Ping Sherlock holmes or Fox Mulder, every 4 hours for a status update on his thought process, or even every day for that matter. One does not harass the graphics designer every hour about when they are going to get past their art block on creating such and such, and forward movement, etc. You wait, and as professionals it is upon them to report once they are organized and ready to report.
The progress on cases is a glacial thing; even with hardworking detectives--you don't more regularly have progress to discuss, than perhaps a monthly or bi-weekly update on case files they've taken. If the day is spent reading reports and other necessary activities: most of the time they simply won't have anything to give you. It also does not make sense for a detective to write reports about reports. And as a mental discipline the detectives would need time to organize their thoughts. It's not a good idea to disrupt peoples' workflows and ask for them to make extra reports just to have a proof that they are working. Reports like that do not cause progress, and quite the opposite. More unnecessary work and a slowing down the process is the result of inserting additional problems for the detectives to solve.
Also; I don't believe controlling where the detectives work is a solution to this problem -- the whole keylogger thing or caring about where they work shows a misguided approach. Th detectives are presumably just as likely to spend time pretending to read reports while goofing off at a central office.
This should not necessarily be a huge deal either. Progress can be stalled on many cases for reasons that are outside detectives' controls.
Fresh leads may be lacking. Those forensic samples the labs are going take months to get back can be pivotal to the direction of the cases, etc. Detectives are going to be appraised eventually by whether or not they solve the cases, and how many they do manage to close. That is where the performance measurements exist, And it is the detectives' jobs to make certain they deliver. A detective's manager's jobs is not to micromanage detectives' case work,