Edmonton Police Service takes a bigger bite out of crime, thanks to an IBM Cognos system

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has a population of approximately 780,000, with a regional population of more than 1 million residents. The city’s Police Service has more than 1,800 employees.

Today, the Edmonton Police Services (EPS) is better trained, better educated and more diverse than at any other time in history. This situation is due partly to the technological capabilities that allow officers and support staff to be better equipped and well-informed when problem solving and dealing with day-to-day responsibilities. The service’s vision is to maintain a safe, vibrant city, which is achieved through innovative, responsive community policing. In partnership with its citizens, Edmonton Police Service is building safe communities through leadership and policing excellence.

Challenges Faced
EPS’s primary mandate is to prevent and reduce crime and victimization, and its secondary goals focus on providing a citizen-centered service. Chief of Police, Mike Boyd, joined the Edmonton Police Service as its new chief in January 2006, and set very specific goals for aligning performance with expectations.

Because EPS is a public entity, residents expect the organization to provide comprehensive public safety services – when and where they are needed most. To achieve those goals, EPS developed a geographically based deployment model for patrol personnel with specific performance indicators. To help with this initiative, EPS chose to implement IBM Cognos 8 BI and IBM Cognos Data Manager after its IT director saw their capabilities at a product demonstration during the Gartner BI Summit.

Strategy Followed
The service decided to take a phased approach to deploying the IBM Cognos system, and its first step was to look at reporting from its Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. Specifically, EPS needed to know what type of calls officers were asked to respond to, and what the public demand was for its services. Early in the project, IBM Cognos technology was implemented to support the new patrol deployment, also based on CAD data, and to create performance measurements that IBM Cognos 8 BI was able to track. Once the performance measurements were set, police officials could identify trends, frequency and even types of crimes happening in specific locations. From there, the service integrated IBM Cognos 8 BI with the EPS records management system, Niche, in order to report on the actual investigative work resulting from the public service. By breaking the corporate picture down into business layers, EPS also gained better insight into specific trends and the reasons behind those trends.

“IBM Cognos 8 BI allows us to track performance objectives specific to how long it takes police to respond to the most important emergencies – such as life-and-death, priority one calls where the goal is to arrive on scene in seven minutes or less,” states John Warden, BI project team lead at Edmonton Police Service. EPS chose the IBM Cognos solution after evaluating several competing vendors, and went live with IBM Cognos 8 BI and IBM Cognos Data Manager in September 2005.

Thanks to support from IBM Cognos Professional Services and IBM Cognos Consulting partner, MB Services, IBM Cognos 8 BI was implemented quickly. The support team also helped EPS implement IBM Cognos Data Manager as their extraction, transformation and loading tool for the data warehouse, together meeting the expectation of supporting performance reporting with the department’s vision and strategy. IBM Cognos 8 BI runs in EPS’s Microsoft® Windows® environment and pulls data from its Microsoft SQL Server® and Oracle 10G database.

Benefits Realized
As part of the service’s mandate of providing increased accountability and a higher level of public safety for the Edmonton community, EPS is using the IBM Cognos system to monitor and track crime management and response management more closely. Police are able to see data in near real time, which helps them identify problems, associated trends and locations of crimes, so they can determine their response and problem-solving solutions.

After implementing the IBM Cognos solution, police have also been able to look at the components of response times – such as dispatch delays and travel time – to identify the issues that play a role in overall response time. EPS can monitor performance strategically over time and place, and tactically on a day-by-day and call-by-call basis.

Another new effectiveness objective is for Edmonton’s patrol cars to spend 25 percent of a normal 660-minute shift engaged in proactive work in the neighborhoods to which they are assigned. The service has developed a comprehensive reporting tool that tracks all aspects of a patrol unit’s time, based on categories of work done, such as: time spent on calls for service, proactive work and administration, and time available. By tracking the amount of time spent on work categories, police officials can determine if they are meeting performance objectives and identify issues affecting efficiency and effectiveness.

Recently, the police have begun using IBM Cognos 8 BI reports to inform the public about the situation of crime in their neighborhoods, so the system is having a direct impact on the public.

With IBM Cognos 8 BI, EPS has found an increase in tactical problem-solving, discovering where and when crimes are likely to take place. The police have improved dimensional modeling, drilling down to divisional, district and neighborhood levels. The IBM Cognos system provides the technology to link performance goals from the executive right down to the constables on the street and hold strategic performance briefings that allow police to examine crimes based on indicators. The solution also assists the department in aligning its performance both strategically and tactically in all these overarching goals.

“Recently, police were able to make more resources available proactively to deal with a potential increase of arson activity. We noticed an upward trend in the crime, based on data made available through IBM Cognos 8 BI reporting,” says Warden. “We were able to recognize an increase in this particular type of crime and by comparing against previous years’ data were able to ascertain that the trend was likely to increase during the warmer months of March to July. It was our operational officers, though, who used the trending data to deploy resources to the problem and to take action.” Police efforts were ultimately successful in nearly eliminating arson in that particular area during this timeframe, due in part to the successful implementation of IBM Cognos 8 BI.”

Lastly, using BI reports, EPS can react and solve problems quickly, not just city-wide, but down to the policing boundaries of divisions and districts, and specific boundaries of communities and neighborhoods. Some 450 users in the agency see BI reports, and EPS has more than 100 BI reports in production under the categories of crime management, patrol management and dashboard reports. The agency uses a broad based, push-and-pull dissemination process, and report views scheduled into IBM Cognos portals that are customized for each user. The result is a more holistic approach that makes the department more efficient.

“We look at crime issues of the day, of the week and of the month, on a daily basis to see if there are any trends or spiking concerns that need action. Decision-making by our executive team and our commanders is informed and empowered through BI reporting. For us, the bottom line is to prevent crime, and BI reporting helps us do that,” comments Warden.

About IBM Cognos BI and Performance Management
IBM Cognos business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions deliver world-leading enterprise planning, consolidation and BI software, support and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. IBM Cognos solutions bring together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers an open, adaptive and complete performance solution. Over 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries around the world choose IBM Cognos solutions.