Performance matters: The role of management software

Technology is playing a key part in delivering on the Assessments of Policing and Community Safety (APACS) framework – the performance management guidelines introduced almost a year ago to provide a unified set of measurements across the community safety agenda, covering key services delivered by the police working on their own or in partnership with others.

The Assessments of Policing and Community Safety (APACS) framework was introduced in April 2008 to replace the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF).
The introduction of the PPAF in 2004 had done much to produce better policing performance across England and Wales, fostering a strong performance management culture that has now become firmly embedded in the way the police and its partners plan and deliver services to reduce crime and ensure safer communities, albeit with eroneous constraints.
The new simplified framework reduces the number of measures by which the police and others are judged in terms of their success on crime and community safety and reduces the data demands of central government, at the same time making it easier for software suppliers to adapt their existing ‘one-size-fits-all’ public sector systems – historically geared towards local authorities – to the very specific needs of the police service.
Performance indicators form a key part of APACS, measuring outcomes, perceptions and activities which reflect the impact of community safety and policing services in local communities. The suite of indicators is designed to measure performance over five core areas:
•Promoting safety, eg, anti-social behaviour and road safety.
•Tackling crime, eg, burglary, robbery and violent crime.
•Serious crime and protection, eg, organised crime or major civil emergencies.
•Confidence and satisfaction, eg, public confidence, satisfaction with services.
•Organisational management, eg, value-for-money, financial management.
The new framework covers policing and community safety issues in a balanced way which focuses better on the most serious crimes and criminals, harmonising with other related frameworks and containing indicators and targets which are shared between partners.
Following the release of the Policing Green Paper, From the Neighbourhood to the National: Policing our Communities Together, the Home Office will no longer be using these indicators to set top-down numerical targets (apart from a single target on confidence) or to provide graded assessments of individual police forces. Instead, it will take a more strategic role in performance management of the police, with an increased role for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) nationally and police authorities at a local level. However, APACS will remain as a tool to help partners in England and Wales measure and improve performance against national and local priorities.
To this end, technology is playing an increasingly key part in giving forces better operational and resource management and a simple, consistent solution to self-assessment and reporting.

Business intelligence
Accurate and appropriate business intelligence is critical in the attainment of both the short and long-term goals of an organisation, giving it the ability to make the best decisions to ensure present and future success.
Business performance management software optimises business performance through the analysis of business processes and the provision of forecasting tools and performance analysis, providing a suite of tools necessary to collect and analyse such data.
As Steve Fluin, senior vice-president in the performance management division of business intelligence specialists Actuate, explained: “There is a compelling need within UK police forces for a comprehensive performance management system that delivers visual and actionable information in a management-friendly interface.”
In 2007, Sussex Police rolled out Actuate’s Performancesoft Views software to deliver performance reporting information to its 5,0