The Police Service of Northern Ireland manages performance more transparently

The purpose of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is to make the country safer through professional, progressive policing. The service takes a proactive, community-driven approach to police work, working closely with the local community to identify and solve problems. PSNI’s jurisdiction is divided into eight districts, with 29 policing areas and more than 80 police stations. It employs 7,000 police officers and approximately 2,500 auxiliary staff.

Like all of the UK’s 43 territorial police forces, PSNI’s performance is measured against a range of different targets. In its case, these targets are defined by the Northern Ireland Policing Board, and are divided into three groups: ‘professional’ targets, which measure quality of service; ‘protective’ targets, which address areas such as serious crime, road safety and drugs; and ‘personal’ targets, which are concerned with anti-social behaviour , burglaries and other similar issues. PSNI reports to the Policing Board every month, and also makes a number of crime statistics and performance figures available to the public on its website.

High demand for reporting
“We have a number of important obligations in terms of reporting operational and performance-related information to external bodies,” explains Inspector Amanda Brisbane, Corporate Performance Manager for PSNI. “We also need to maintain visibility of this kind of information internally, to help us identify the areas where problems are occurring and mitigate the risk of failing to achieve our targets.

“Until recently, however, we lacked the tools to implement an effective corporate performance and risk management solution. Each of the eight police districts handled reporting in its own way, usually by maintaining a variety of spreadsheets, and creating consolidated reports across the whole service was a major effort.

“More importantly, without up to date information, it was difficult to find out what was happening on a day-to-day basis. If there is a problem in one area or neighbourhood, our district commanders and risk managers need to be made aware of it as soon as possible so that they can decide how to distribute resources to address it – and it was not easy to achieve this with our existing approach.”

Finding a way forward
Inspector Brisbane’s team was tasked with developing a more coherent approach to performance management across the whole service, and began to consider the options.

“We had a centralised system that was handling some of our risk management, but it wasn’t really flexible enough for our needs, and it was also coming to the end of its licensing period,” she explains. “We had been using IBM Cognos Business Intelligence as a reporting tool for other aspects of our operations, and we saw an opportunity to extend it to provide performance and risk management too.

“Besides the obvious advantages of Cognos as a leading business analytics engine, it also had two specific benefits: first, we already had several years’ experience of working with it, so we had built up our skills in-house; and second, there would be no need to install new software or hardware.”

Building a partnership
The potential of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence as a performance and risk management solution was further demonstrated by Bidetime, an IBM Business Partner with specialist expertise in designing IBM Cognos solutions for public sector organisations.

“Bidetime worked with our IT team to show how a performance management solution could work in practice, and played a key part in building the business case and getting the senior management interested in the solution,” comments Inspector Brisbane. “The solution they demonstrated to our senior managers ultimately grew into the system we now call PRiDE- Performance and Risk in Delivering Excellence.”

Ced Bufton, Managing Director of Bidetime, comments: “We’re especially grateful to both the project team and the management of the Police Service of Northern Ireland for their support during the implementation of this solution. The close teamwork between PSNI and Bidetime has helped create a great solution that really makes use of the capabilities of IBM Cognos. It will deliver real value to PSNI and potentially to other police organisations throughout the UK and Ireland.”

The benefits of PRiDE
PRiDE integrates data from all eight police districts and provides a single source of information for analysing performance against targets. It allows users to get an overall view of police operations in Northern Ireland, and also drill down to district and area level to identify problems.

It also integrates PSNI’s risk registers, enabling the solution to provide automated alerts if mitigating control actions have not been completed.

“Since the data is updated every day, we can get a picture of whether the situation is improving, which helps us allocate our resources more effectively,” says Inspector Brisbane.

Analysing trends
The solution also allows PSNI to compare current data with historical data, using a 12-month rolling forecast to highlight trends and even make predictions. In a territory where seasonality can make a significant difference to police workload – because of the various annual parades, for example – the ability to handle data on a 12-month rolling basis is particularly valuable.

Simpler reporting
In addition to the day-to-day operational benefits of the solution, it also provides a much easier way to produce monthly reports for the Policing Board, and to generate statistics for the public website. Instead of emailing or calling all the different districts to gather data, and then checking and consolidating it by hand, the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence solution provides a single, reliable source of information that can be easily analysed and presented in a variety of clear, easily understood graphical formats.

Inspector Brisbane concludes: “With Bidetime’s help, we have been able to create a solution that provides a solid foundation for performance and risk management across the entire police service. As we go forward, we plan to develop the solution further, giving us visibility of operations down to the neighbourhood level – helping us maintain our focus on proactive policing that engages directly with local communities throughout Northern Ireland.”

About Bidetime
Bidetime specialises in the development and delivery of information systems for the public sector. Its aim is to help clients manage, analyse and deploy information as efficiently and painlessly as possible. Its solutions provide control over the delivery of information by using market-leading software and industry-standard techniques.

About IBM Business Analytics
IBM Business Analytics software delivers complete, consistent and accurate information that decision-makers trust to improve business performance. A comprehensive portfolio of business intelligence, predictive analytics, financial performance and strategy management, and analytic applications provides clear, immediate and actionable insights into current performance and the ability to predict future outcomes.

Combined with rich industry solutions, proven practices and professional services, organisations of every size can drive the highest productivity, confidently automate decisions, and deliver better results.