Page 2200 - Week 06 - Thursday, 6 June 2019
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Another area that plays a crucial role in improved service delivery is data. Both the London Metropolitan Police and the West Midlands Police have relied on data to guide their reforms and drive improvements within the force and broader service to the public. For example, West Midlands Police utilises a data scientist to help with analytics, informing their performance dashboard and service delivery. ACT Policing have also been analysing the data they hold and how this could be better used to improve their work.
One thing is very clear: the setting of performance measures for police will be ongoing work across forces, given that it can often be very difficult to accurately capture the community benefits of all the work they do. Each of the forces we met with has a performance measure. Each also has a program to work to refine them. Our discussions were mutually beneficial to this overall aim of developing a framework that accurately reflects the service police provide to the community. A performance and outcomes framework will remain a focus for our policing engagement, of course, with the Australian Federal Police.
Our discussions also included insights from those who have led the reform process and those who have observed from outside. Both Police Scotland and the West Midlands Police have undergone significant reform to their policing models. Each has been focused on service delivery for the community by moving from a reactive to a proactive policing model. The fact is that the job of a police officer is very different now to what it was 40 years ago, and very different to when someone joined the force only 10 years ago.
We heard from one service that only 20 per cent of the incidents attended resulted in a crime being recorded. This reflects the broader social role that our police members play in supporting and protecting our community. Police services around the world are recognising this and changing their operational models. This is something ACT Policing began working on and looking at a few years ago, and I am pleased this year’s budget commits initial funding to begin this transition to a new police service model over coming years.
Unlike those forces in the UK, our reforms are not being driven by austerity. Rather, we recognise that the nature of policing has changed and we need to reform and find better ways of serving the needs of our community to ensure future sustainability and continued crime reduction. We need to find better ways to help police do their job, helping to improve broader workforce and service delivery outcomes. And this is part of the almost $34 million investment that has been made by the government to support ACT Policing announced as part of this year’s budget. This is in addition to more than $9 million committed to capital works to improve the support infrastructure for ACT Policing.
Our discussions with policing counterparts in the UK will further inform our work as part of the ACT Policing futures project and also provided valuable lessons for us to consider on its implementation. These lessons have been taken on board by the Chief Police Officer. The futures project is not one that we will rush into. It will be implemented methodically and we will take as much time as is needed to get it right.
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