Microsoft UK Public Sector - Efficiency - Business Intelligence improves crime prevention

Kim Thomas finds out how Norfolk Constabulary is using Microsoft’s business intelligence platform to gain better real-time insight into criminal activity and police resourcing requirements – whilst also cutting out much of the ‘paperwork’ that so inflames public anger.

Like other UK police forces, Norfolk Constabulary is expected to meet government targets for solving crimes – which means that it has to collect data on its performance and present it to the Home Office. And, like other UK police forces, it has found this a demanding and time-consuming task. When data is held in different databases or filing systems, collating it, checking its accuracy and presenting it in a comprehensible format is no small job.

Until recently, it was a job that was shared between numerous members of staff. Keith Philpot, Inspector, Business Review Unit, Norfolk Constabulary says: “There wasn't one authority deciding what to publish to the wider police force of Norfolk Constabulary. Individuals who were thought to have the most accurate information were given the responsibility to disseminate it.” Worse, the data was always out of date by the time anyone in authority looked at it.

This lack of a systematic method for gathering data wasn’t just costing the Constabulary time and effort. It also meant that it was unable to analyse its own performance in a way that would enable it to become more effective. It couldn’t answer such questions as “What happens to crime rates in the rest of the county if large numbers of police are deployed on the day of the Lord Mayor’s procession?” or “What impact does putting more policemen on the beat have on street crime?”

In short, the system was a bit of a mess. Michael Tomlinson of Microsoft sums it up: “The big problem was that they had disparate individuals reporting performance; inaccurate and historical data; no single data source; and no single way of capturing performance. Most of Norfolk’s performance management was purely at the request of external parties like the Home Office or the Audit Commission. They had no single view of their own performance, and no way of capturing that information or managing it.”

This is a classic symptom of collecting data in a vacuum. “They were focusing on numbers but not on what the numbers meant. They were unsure what successful performance and successful policing looked like and how to measure whether they were on target to be successful or not,” continues Tomlinson.

To remedy the problem, Norfolk hired Microsoft and Contemporary, a Microsoft Gold Partner, to implement a business intelligence system based on SQL Server. Because it had signed an Enterprise Agreement, Norfolk already owned much of the technology used in the solution. The system, Microsoft Policing Performance Management, was implemented in a 10-week period between January and April 2008.

Microsoft Policing Performance Management draws data from all the separate data sources held by Norfolk Constabulary. It then presents the data in graphical format through a series of pre-defined reports, but also provides the ability for users to create their own, tailored reports, all viewed through Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server.

Users can see information in a variety of ways – all of which are simple and clear to understand:

• Dashboard. Each user sees a dashboard that uses the traffic light system of red, amber and green to show how well the force is performing against its targets.
• Scorecard. Each user has a customised scorecard showing the information they need to do their own jobs.
• Individual performance indicators. These show how well individual officers are doing against targets: how many incidents they’ve attended, whether they’ve responded on time, and how many crimes they’re investigating.

The time-consuming task of collecting and presenting data has disappeared altogether: no-one has to create reports, because they are created automatically, and the system sends an email reporting on performance against targets to the Home Office on the first day of every month. This saving in time and effort means the system paid for itself in the first week of going live. Staff previously engaged in collecting data and creating reports are now spending time analysing information and making intelligent use of it.

But has it improved performance? The answer is undoubtedly “Yes”. The police are now able to correlate different activities, so they can easily and quickly assess the impact of different decisions. If a number of officers are deployed to a football match, the force knows straight away whether crime increases elsewhere in the county. Because data is available in real time, officers are able to spot a spike in crime in a particular area as soon as it happens. “We have a number of trigger plans now, based on specific crime activity,” says Philpot.

The implementation has been part of a wider strategy to reduce crime. In the past two years, violent crime has decreased by 12 per cent, criminal damage 14 per cent, and car crime is down 25 per cent. Some of this reduction is clearly down to the force’s ability to respond to changing circumstances in a much more agile way. “This is a way of capturing information, modelling it and predicting how they’re going to respond in the future,” says Tomlinson.

It’s not surprising that many other police forces are now keen to follow in Norfolk’s footsteps. Not only has the Constabulary seen an improvement in efficiency and reduced crime figures; but also surveys show that public confidence in the force has improved too. As Philpot says, “We are in the business of preventing crime and disorder but above all, we're also in the business of working with the public. Effective flow of information helps managers make better decisions, which leads to a more effective police force, higher levels of service and an improved public image.”

Kim Thomas is a freelance journalist, who specialises in writing about technology, business and education. Her clients include the Financial Times, the Economist Intelligence Unit and The Guardian as well as a number of B2B publications.