Wiltshire improves performance management

Wiltshire Police has chosen Actuate Performancesoft Views (Views) to deliver its strategic performance improvement initiative.

The force is developing its performance management programme currently in line with the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF).

This framework has been developed by the Home Office and requires all forces to measure operational effectiveness, satisfaction and organisational capability in line with the Government’s desire to enhance policing accountability at a local and national level.

John Warman, project manager at Wiltshire, said: “Wiltshire Constabulary is committed to continuous improvement in delivering services for the community, and we see Views as a key component of our performance improvement programme. Views not only facilitates improved decision making internally, but will enable us to readily provide consistent performance information, in appropriate amounts of detail, to local authorities, criminal justice agencies and the public on an ongoing basis.”

Steve Fluin, senior vice president, Performance Management Division, Actuate, also commented: “More and more police and emergency service organisations recognise that to take their strategic initiatives further they need to implement a tool that measures, manages and improves on the quantity of performance data that they generate and use for reporting. Wiltshire joins a growing list of emergency service organisations that have made the decision to select Views as their Performance Management solution.

“We are delighted to welcome them as customers and we firmly believe that the strategy focused information Views provides will help to drive forward the realisation of their performance goals.”

Wiltshire is developing Views as the platform through which it can measure, manage and improve its performance against key indicators such as crime occurrence and detection levels, and then report this information back to its staff and the wider community it serves.

Desktop dashboards and publishable briefing books, plus being able to configure the software to drill down to record level detail, were key features of the software that appealed to Wiltshire when evaluating Views against other competitors in the market.

“Our selection process included working with the Actuate professional services team to create a proof of concept test model in which we could assess the robustness and usability of the software using our own data,” said John Warman.

“The success of this trial confirmed our belief that Views was the optimum solution for Wiltshire Constabulary’s performance management needs – it was visual, easy to use and quick to build.

“The ability to quickly look at performance information at different levels facilitates determining the extent and geographical areas of good performance and areas for improvement.

“This is envisaged as being particularly useful in supporting the management of the new Neighbourhood Policing Teams being rolled out across the force,” concluded John Warman.