Tasmanian Police Call Centre Project, Offence Reporting Process

Tasmanian Police Call Centre Project – Offence Reporting Process

Leonie Thomas

Idea Group Publishing

Police Offence Reporting Process IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING 1331 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1117, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com

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g n i h s i l b u P p u o r Centre G a e d Tasmanian Police Call I t h g i r y p o C Project – Offence Reporting g n i h Process s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h rig y p Co g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y g Cop n i h s BACKGROUND i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop Leonie Thomas University of Tasmania, Australia

This case study provides some insight into the development of a Call Centre in the Australian State of Tasmania for Tasmania Police. The Call Centre replaced the existing Criminal Offence Modus Operandi paper based system. The project was reliant on two other projects: Radio Network project and Project SAMSON (providing a standard desktop throughout the organisation). The project timeframe from conception to pilot was six months. The project had an operating budget of AUS $166,000. The project was managed by a project team with the development of the system outsourced to external contractors. The management of both the contractors and the internal information technology branch is a significant part of the case study along with system development. The organisation effectively used change management and change agents to help communicate information relating to the projects to the rest of the organisation. The aim of the project was to return as many police as possible back to their core activity, that is, policing.

Tasmania, a state of Australia, has a population of 500,000 living in small towns and rural properties scattered over two thirds of an island roughly the size of Wales. The remaining third is a world heritage area. The crime rate in Tasmania has traditionally been low, but has risen in the past decade. At the same time, the cost of policing has risen, leading to greater emphasis on improving efficiencies and cutting costs. At present, there are 1,100 sworn officers in the police organisation. Tasmania Police has a three-tiered structure: upper management (commissioner, deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners, directors and superintendents); middle management (inspectors and sergeants); operational police (constables). The organisation is supported by a pool of ‘unsworn personnel’ with duties ranging

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from management, clerical and reception to operating speed cameras. In recent times, many functions that were previously performed only by sworn officers have been reallocated to unsworn personnel. The state is divided into four policing districts: Northern, Western, Eastern and Southern. Tasmania Police requires the sworn officers to accept transfers and move between districts. To enhance promotional opportunities, an officer should work in more than one district. Each district has a distinctive culture. However, to maximise the use of its sworn human resources, the organisation, makes frequent use of temporary secondments. In the mid-1990s the State government guaranteed to keep police numbers stable but would not increase the budget to expand policing activities. To resolve this deadlock Tasmania Police undertook a reengineering exercise with a view to making efficiency gains. These gains would be calculated on the basis of full-time equivalents (FTEs), meaning that the gains would result in police being freed up to do policing rather than administration. Tasmania Police hired consultants to examine their work practices as well as analyse the perceptions of both its internal and external stakeholders. Vision and mission statements were then developed to provide a strategic focus for the organisation. In addition 27 “Quick Wins” were identified to enable the organisation to assess how well its members accepted the changes. A “Quick Win” was defined as a change to a process that could be implemented in less than a year, be low in cost and cause little disruption to existing work practices. Most of the Quick Wins were subsequently implemented. An independent assessment found that the organisation was indeed ready to accept change. Rather than undertake a full-scale business process reengineering (BPR) exercise, consultants (together with members of the organisation) prepared a four phased plan to strategically realign the organisation. The plan was given the name of BATON (Business Alignment of Technology to Operations Networks). Project BATON was a Tasmania Police initiative to make Tasmania the safest state in the nation, and to gain recognition as a firstclass police organisation. Project BATON focused on developing resource management strategies and improving business processes in line with four strategic directions: • core policing • operational excellence • organisational learning

g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y g Cop n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h rig y p g Co n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e SETTING THE STAGE d I t h g i r y p o C After a period of little action, BATON was relaunched in the organisation, with Customer Service presentations at most stations. Feedback sessions, using a strict methodology, were conducted to gain some insight into the ‘real’ issues or concerns in the organisation. Participants were asked to write points, either positive or negative, on cards and hand them to facilitators who grouped them into common themes. The participants were then asked to take ownership of their cards as they were read out and to explain the point further or accept or reject the category in which the card had been placed. The methodology used is very similar to a group decision support system (GDSS); this option was explored later.

In April 1997, the Tasmanian premier announced a Call Centre strategy for the state. Opportunities provided by the Call Centre strategy were recognised in the Tasmania Police business case, produced two months later. The case outlined the existing system, Criminal

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Offence and Modus Operandi, and offered four options, detailing the process, cost, savings, productivity improvements and strategic alignment involved in each. Option 4A was selected as the preferred option which had an establishment cost of AUS$166,000 Project BATON had identified problems with the paper-based Criminal Offence and Modus Operandi (COMO). “Incidents from the field are presently compiled on the return of an officer to a station, with the report then being mailed to a data entry point. By reporting these incidents directly to a data entry point, paperwork is reduced, information timelines are improved and officers spend less time on administrative work leaving them free for operational policing” (IRMS – Section 8.2.2, Project BATON, 1996). This was clearly an area where the Call Centre could provide significant savings in the time police spent on non-policing matters, as well as improving efficiency. A complete mapping of the system revealed that the average time for a crime report to be processed was 14 days and 10 hours. In addition, a crime report sometimes had missing or incorrect information. The Call Centre’s development would be constrained by two existing projects: the Police Mobile Radio Network project, designed to improve security of communication and increase the coverage of the radio network, and Project SAMSON, which was to provide a standard desktop across the organisation (originally this was to be Windows NT). The Radio Network project was to be piloted in the Northern district at the same time as the Call Centre project. Project BATON was given control of the project for Tasmania Police to adapt its work practices to take full advantage of the Call Centre. The BATON team at the time consisted of a manager (inspector), an administrative assistant (unsworn) and a coordinator of change management (constable). The staff was increased by three people on secondment: a project manager (a sergeant), an information technologist (unsworn) and the only person experienced in project implementation, and a trainer (unsworn). As a part of the focus on using a change management framework, the organisation recruited people to act as change agents. Possible agents were approached by the manager of the BATON team. They were selected not on the basis of their commitment to the organisation but on their credibility in the organisation. As a result, one of the recruits was a strong union member. The role of change management coordinator (the constable) was to ensure a reasonable change management strategy was adopted when implementing projects and to keep the change agents informed of the progress and the reasons for implementing the change. Unfortunately, the constable was on secondment and had to return to her substantive position (secondment was allocated on time, rather than project-based) before the pilot was implemented.

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stakeholders. These are the main issues they identified: • Heavily paper-intensive processes cause problems such as significant delays associated with physically moving the documents. • Document tracking is cumbersome, and is currently achieved by means of ‘home grown’ document tracking system. • Significant amounts of police time are spent on administrative tasks. • The Crime Analysis System, which is the main electronic database currently available, does not store all information required by the end users, access to the database is limited. • Information is mainly disseminated by sending printouts to end users through internal mail. • The quality of customer service is unsatisfactory because there are numerous points of contact, especially when calling by telephone. • Processing in both COMO and SMV is slow. • Neither COMO nor SMV has a unique identifier. • Quality control is poor and there are serious inconsistencies affecting both investigations and statistical reporting. • The SMV and Crime Analysis computer systems are not integrated, resulting in duplication of effort. • The delay in producing the SMV list results in the list being out of date by the time it is received by the operational police. The next stage was to produce an offence reporting process, drawing on the issues and opportunities previously identified to conceptualise the future operations. This resulted in a single, standardised ‘Offence Reporting Process’ that would utilise the Call Centre and cater for all offence reports. The Steering Committee of the Call Centre project was responsible for high-level policy and resourcing decisions. The Internal Management Committee was responsible for departmental policy and resourcing decisions that were outside the scope or knowledge of the steering committee, but were nonetheless essential for the delivery of project outputs and the attainment of project outcomes. It was the responsibility of the Internal Management Committee to ensure appropriate management of the project components as outlined in the business plan. A project sponsor – in this case the Deputy Commissioner of Police – assisted with business management and systems development issues that arose outside the formal business of the Steering Committee The project manager was required to report to the Internal Management Committee, which met fortnightly, on: • the status of the project • areas of concern, and • risk management, where appropriate.

g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y g Cop n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h rig y p g Co n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop A detailed risk management plan was produced, identifying the areas of concern, likelihoods, impacts, counter measures and costs. The main issues were: Call Centre staffing; possibly inadequate skills in Call Centre staff; inability or resistance to using the new process by operational police; inability of existing police computer infrastructure to cope with new technology; radio network unable to cope with Call Centre traffic; contractors failing to meet implementation milestones; implementation before Project SAMSON and the Radio Net-

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Figure 1: Schedule and Milestones for the Call Centre Project

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working projects; and the technical risks associated with technological solutions that were new to the both department and the state. The risk management plan was revised during the life of the project. The project was developed in four phases, which relate to the standard phases in systems development though no particular systems development methodology was used. Figure 1 details the schedule and milestones for the project. The author joined the project team at the beginning of Phase 3. The project had been outsourced to a private provider, largely because the internal information technology branch (ITB) claimed lack of expertise and lack of time and resources to complete the project in the very tight timeframe (six months). The timeframe was a key issue, as the government wanted the Call Centre and Radio Network project to rollout together. It was an incredibly short timeframe. The project was put up for tender, with the successful applicant subsequently subcontracting the interface and e-mail to another private local firm. The consultant from the main outsourcing firm, Firm A, held regular meetings, conducted risk analysis and was in constant communication with the project team. Milestones were agreed upon at the outset, and the consultant from Firm A was usually present when the project manager reported to the Internal Management Committee. The Offence Reporting process was to be the pilot for the Call Centre project. To support the launch the change agents made presentations across the State, using a video to ensure the message was consistent. They were instructed to stop the tape at strategic places and provide additional information. As the pilot would be implemented first in the Northern district, the superintendent and other key players were consulted continually about any concerns they may have had. The Call Centre project relied on nearly all stations being online and personnel having reasonable access to a computer. However, these essential prerequisites became major problems for the project. Project SAMSOM, which was to have ensured this before the Call Centre project began, had been delayed by arguments about which common platform was to be used. By the time the Call Centre project started, the project team still had no idea of how many PCs, let alone what types, were in the work areas, and some of the stations were still not online. The problem became clear at the first meeting with the Northern Superintendent. There was no documentation of the numbers and models of PC’s in the district; the information was in the head of one of the stations constables. The Offence Reporting process required the reports to be allocated to particular CIB detectives. The system would automatically forward an Offence Report to the designated CIB detective, who would then review the report and decide whether it should be investigated by CIB or handed on to a uniform officer. The allocation would be done using e-mail. During the initial meeting with the allocation officers in the Northern Districts, it became apparent that many had poor computing skills. Unaddressed, this problem would have been a high risk element. The lack of computer skills would translate into an inability to fully understand how the new system would work. There was not yet a developed prototype—just documentation. By identifying the lack of understanding relating to the system at this early stage, the project team could take corrective action. The first action was to add a flow chart to the Aide Memoir (Policy document). The second action was to arrange for a project team member to give support and additional on-the-spot training to the allocation officer who had poor computer skills on rollout day. While this had originally been incorporated into the rollout

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plan it had now become a critical success factor. The third action was to develop a separate procedure for the stations that were not online and therefore could not receive the Offence reports electronically. The Police Call Centre was sited in the Southern Districts headquarters in the Information Bureau’s offices. As similar Call Centres had been established for other departments in the State, the project team could draw on their experience. The room can accommodate eight operators. As operators would be required to be at their workstations for stretches of time, special attention was paid to the ergonomics of the Call Centre. The room was also equipped with a TV and exercise machine for quiet times. The training for the Call Centre staff was conducted by a member of the project team. Training began two weeks before the project was piloted in the Northern District. Some of the staff had transferred from other areas in the organisation, while some were newly appointed. Twelve operators were trained to provide 24-hour coverage. All were nonuniform staff. One of the main drivers behind the project was to improve the quality of the data being entered into the systems. It was thought this would be more achievable by training 12 data entry operators than 1,100 sworn police officers. The rollout date for the Northern district had been set for 25 March, 1998. The consultant from Firm A informed the project team on 12 March that this deadline could not be met. At a meeting between the consultant and the project team, tasks left to be completed were identified and a new rollout date was set, 1 April, 1998 (an astonishing choice). At this time in the project, both consulting firms and the internal ITB were working on various aspects of the project. The politics of the three were interesting. The ITB seemed to be working in a different direction to the project, at times moving away from the original specifications to second or third options. The subcontracted consulting firm, Firm B, complained about lack of early involvement and lack of communication and never managed to understand the system or the requirements of the end user. Consequently, it delivered an unacceptable interface. The consultant from Firm A tried to coordinate the efforts of the three groups but had to rely on the project team, especially the project manager and the project manager of BATON, to keep everyone on track. The success of the project would rely heavily on the project team having some IT knowledge, so it could fully investigate any options proposed by the consultants. However, this knowledge was not put to full use when dealing with the ITB as the project team member was on secondment from ITB and would eventually return to it. There was no question about the skill level of the ITB, but there was some about their commitment to the project relative to the other functions they performed. Six days before rollout the acceptance testing began. ITB was keen on conducting validity testing, concurrency testing, disconnecting the power, and testing and retrieval of data tracking. Recovery issues, along with issues of replication, were still on the agenda and would be dealt with after the pilot had been rolled out. During meetings with Firm A and ITB, issues were prioritised as having to be dealt with either before or after rollout of the pilot. The project team was still very much in control of the prioritising process, and clearly understood the issues and constraints. The Call Centre staff was given extra training and some mock exercises to fill in the week the rollout was delayed. During this time, some changes to the interface were suggested. They were made before the rollout. An IMG meeting had been called for 3:00pm to finalise the arrangements for rollout the next week. Before the meeting, one of the team

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members tried to load a new version of software at the Call Centre but was unable to complete the task. The project team entered the IMG meeting not sure that the rollout would happen as scheduled, but they managed to convey a positive attitude. The problems were discussed, and IMG agreed it could meet on Monday if necessary to discuss delaying the rollout in the Northern District. The allocation officers were given their hands-on training in the two weeks preceding the Northern District rollout. This timing was intended to maximise the retention of knowledge. The allocation officers thought the training was insufficient, but more time could not be allocated because there was no working prototype to train on. The day the Offence Reporting Process rolled out (1 April 1998), two of the project team members were in the Northern district to deal with any issues that might arise. They began work with meeting the morning shift, finishing after briefing the last shift for that day. One of the project team spent time with the allocation officer who was not confident of his computing skills. This resulted in a planned change to the process—the printing out of every single offence report—not being implemented by the allocation officer. The two members of the project team also travelled around the Northern District to deal with any problems promptly. Most problems were resolved with one-to-one demonstrations or a more detailed explanation of the system. One of the stations reported an offence report with 50 pages of stolen property had arrived but when the report was opened up it was blank. One of the Call Centre operators had mistakenly held down the return key while entering the report. Allocation officers in the Northern District were, in general, not happy with the system. A meeting was called with two members of the project team. They were shown to chairs at the front of a half circle formed by the allocation officers. The project manager started the meeting by explaining that both he and the other team member were there to identify the concerns, prioritise them and then get to work to fix them. He stressed that this was a pilot exercise and was not expected to be perfect. The officers were encouraged to take ownership of the system: They had been consulted all through the process and their concerns would be addressed. The main concern for these officers was the layout of the first “page” of the screen. Firm B had not spent the time needed to fully understand the end-user requirements of the system. When the allocation officer, a detective, accessed an Offence Report, he was doing so to make a decision on who should investigate the matter. To do this, he needed certain pieces of information. However, they were not available on the initial screen, so the allocation officer had to hunt through the Offence Report to find them. What they needed was an executive summary on the initial screen, with more detailed information at a lower or deeper level. Firm B had developed the interface from information collected throughout consultation with members of the organisation. The result was a “wish list” of everything they would like to be included. As well as failing to recognise that, Firm B also did not prioritise the data. The result was an ineffective layout of the interface. The meeting ended on a positive note, with the allocation officers satisfied that their concerns would be attended to. The pilot highlighted other issues that needed to be resolved before the statewide rollout. For example, the amount of e-mail an allocation officer had to deal with was enormous. Then the system did not identify Offence Reports that had been updated by the Call Centre; they were flagged exactly the same as new reports. For the revision, a new

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change agent was recruited: the Northern Allocation Officer who was not confident of his computer skills. He acted as a conduit for improvements to the Offence Reporting Process and also facilitated the flow of information in the Northern District by sharing his newly acquired knowledge of the system with other allocation officers. He became the central point for the project team when requesting updates on the allocation process as well as for his fellow Allocation Officers. During the pilot phase of the project, a server leak was identified. Firm A said it was Firm B’s problem; Firm B claimed it was ITB’s. The project manager let them argue for a while, but when it looked as though it would never be resolved, he called a meeting of all parties and announced that no one would leave until somebody took responsibility for the server leak. Firm A had the impression their involvement in the project ended with the rollout of the pilot. They were currently working on the improvements requested by the Northern District Allocation Officers but this work was in addition to the original contact. The project manager highlighted to firm A that their involvement did not end until the system was working satisfactorily. While the piloting of the Offence Reporting Process was time consuming, it was important to keep the rest of the organisation informed of the project’s progress. The change management coordinator had long returned to her substantive position at the Police academy, and the project team was managing the change aspect of the project. Keeping the Northern District informed of the progress was relatively easy, as there were frequent meetings to discuss improvements or modifications and the new change agent was disseminating information effectively in that District. The rest of the organisation needed an update on the progress of the project and some information on issues that had been identified by the pilot. The project manager was keen on keeping everyone informed, without getting bogged down in technicalities. He called a brainstorming meeting of the project team to help identify the main issues that should be communicated in a newsletter to the organisation. The project team had always kept an issues register, so that no issue would be lost or forgotten. From the register they prioritised the issues. The brainstorming session classified the issues into three categories. In order of priority, these were: • System going down for long periods • Display format of Offence Reports • Radio difficulties Each issue was discussed, giving the reason, impact, contributing factors and action being taken by the project team to correct it. The bulletin would not only provide information to the other three districts, but also let the officers in the Northern District see that the issues they had been raising were being taken seriously. At the time the bulletin was distributed the project manger returned to his substantive position and the information technologist became the new project manager. At the next meeting with the Internal Management Committee the progress of the Offence Reporting Process was discussed. The Internal Management Committee was informed of the instability of the system. They also discussed the Call Centre operators being under worked and which district would be rolled out next. The Internal Management Committee chose the Western, followed by a combined Southern and Eastern rollout. Western was chosen because it is a small district and the resource audit could be quickly conducted. The decision to combine Southern and Eastern was surprising, as the Call

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Centre’s capacity had not yet been tested. This decision gave rise to a high-rating risk factor. A new change management coordinator was seconded from the Internal Investigation Department. As the Internals Department and its members are viewed with suspicion by the rest of the organisation, this seemed to be also a high risk move. The coordinator’s first visit to the Northern District had officers backing away from him, asking “Who are you here to see?” even though he was in uniform rather than the civilian attire worn by Internals. The word soon spread that the change management coordinator role had been filled, and with this came acceptance of the new role he had to perform. On 1 August 1998, the Call Centre and the Offence Reporting Process began state wide operations. The Western District rolled-out on 13 July 1998, the project was about a week behind the original schedule. The increase in calls with the Tasmania-wide linkup created a problem. The time taken to ring through an Offence Report was, as estimated, between 8 and 15 minutes. But there were delays getting calls through to the Call Centre. The centre could place only two calls on hold, which at times left an officer in a victim’s home for 30 minutes trying to ring through the offence. The Radio Network project was not working well, and officers in cars had problems contacting the Call Centre. Officers soon resumed their old habits of not sending in Offence Reports until they returned to the station. They would then ring through three or four offence reports. This affected the rostering of the Call Centre staff, as the peak periods were before breaks and the end of shifts. The project team undertook an education program to try to change the officers habits. Eventually the Commissioner intervened with a directive. The project team, together with the new project team for Integrated Crime Management, looked for ways to reduce the problems with the Call Centre. For example, front-office staff could be given direct input access to reduce the number of face-to-face inquiries being rang through to the centre or the new Crime Management Units being created could take the report over the phone. The latter was the option adopted. There was a minor glitch when the ITB manager visiting the Northern District promised to change staffing levels at the Call Centre during peak times, but he was asked to concentrate on areas under his control. A review of the Call Centre project using a GDSS system identified 33 problems. The major ones were: • Lack of resourcing, mainly access to computers • Unrealistic timeframe for the project • Losing the project manager before the main rollout • Influence of political pressure on scheduling the project

g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y g Cop n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h rig y p g Co n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop The lowest-ranked issue was the politicking to get external stakeholders supporting the project. Seventeen benefits were also identified: The first was that of team dedication, and the last the management of consultants. Further sessions were held with the Call Centre operators, allocation officers and the Internal Management Committee. A manual session, not using the GDSS, was held for 50 officers and front-line personnel to help identify their expectations, issues and benefits from the Call Centre project. The project was delivered on time and almost under budget. Project SAMSOM was finally delivered well after the completion of the Call Centre project.

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REFERENCES Department of Police and Public Safety, Project BATON, Call Centre Project, Tasmania Police, Phase 1, 1997. Department of Police and Public Safety, Project BATON, Call Centre Project, Tasmania Police, Phase 3, 1997.

g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y p Co g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h rig y p Co g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y g Cop n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y Cop Leonie Thomas is a lecturer for the School of Information Systems at the University of Tasmania. Leonie conducts research with the Tasmania Police in relation to change management and in particular the use of change agents as a part of her PhD. Leonie lectures in the first-year unit, Business Information Systems, and the third-year units of Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems. Leonie also coordinates the Honours program at the school.