The Role of Capacity and Demand in a Public Service - Assignment Example

Public services are capacity not demand led – UK Police service It is of utmost necessity that the police service, like any other important public service departments, remains demand led and not capacity led. Capacity led working can put serious constraints in the performance of the police force, which is so vital for providing security and maintaining law and order across the country. Surveys have often pointed out that, the amount of interest shown by the policemen while entertaining a victim’s complaint and the follow up done by them on the same is the prime determinants of victim satisfaction. Also, the satisfaction levels were found to be high when they had to wait less or for a reasonable shorter period of time before their cases were handled. If the capacity of the police force continues to decrease, so as the demand surpasses the supply of resources, then these parameters won’t be satisfied and hence victim satisfaction is bound to fall. United Kingdom has in all 43 police forces. Major authority of decision making operating rests with the Home Secretary, ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) and the APA (Association of Police Authorities). The Home Office among all the three plays the most prominent part as it controls the strings of the purse and also lays out performance targets in the form of the PSAs (Public Service Agreements). On the other hand, there are three levels of police administration in the United States, namely the Federal level, State level and the local level. Unlike in USA, where the funding for the local and state police is provided by the local and state funds, in UK central government remains the main fund provider even for the local level. Hence the government in UK exercises central control on the police forces though it also makes the decision-making and operation of the force more bureaucratic. This has led to the problem of a cumbersome organizational structure, where the decision-making also sometimes gets delayed. Also the decisions taken from the center might not be in total sync with that of the local needs. This is probably the reason why; it has taken so much time for the government to acknowledge the demand – supply gap in the police department. (Evans, 2006) Areas of Concern One of the first places where the supply constraint has hurt the UK police has been neighborhood policing. The chief constituent of the neighborhood policing is the beet constable. His mere presence provided a sense of assurance to the people and is much helpful in keeping public order and security. Hence its decline remains a prime cause of concern. It remains most under staffed and under financed activity of police, although it is the only function of policing, in which direct contact is possible with the public. This has happened because its resources are being used to meet increase in demands and growing focus on investigation and growth of organized crime networks and terrorism. That's why there is an immediate need for making investments in this form of policing. It has been estimated that in addition to giving people a sense of security, neighborhood policing has some economic, social and environmental benefits as well, as in, better participation and safer and cleaner localities, etc. Further, it has direct linkage to higher crimes of cross border movements and national policing because it is always the best source of local intelligence gathering by the police. (ACPO, 2004: 72-73) The need for effective policing has never been felt more. The challenges for the police forces in UK (just like other countries) have increased manifolds in 21st century. Criminals and terrorists are using many new and ingenious methods to spread crime and terror. Along with local and petty criminals, the country also faces threats from the vagaries of cross border terrorism and international drug racketeers. Added to it is the case of UK being a multiethnic country, where people of diverse backgrounds having different religious views and socio cultural beliefs coexist together. The July bombing in London has brought many of these issues to the fore. London is also going to host the Olympics in 2012; this will most certainly put pressure on the police and other essential services which are already working overtime under full capacity. Hence it is of utmost importance that the strength of the police force is raised so that its infrastructure is in a position to deal with all the exigencies of the future. What Is Being Done In order to stem this fall in capacity and recognizing the need to catch up with the fast rising demands for the police services, the government has decided to provide more funds for the same. The 2008 Pre-Budget Report proposes high levels of investment to improve public services; £20 million alone has been set aside for the improvement of the infrastructure of the Serious Organized Crime Agency and the National Police Improvement Agency. The 2008 Budget Report also announced an investment of £1 billion, equivalent to increasing the size of the police service by around 20,000 officers. Another prominent measure undertaken by the home office includes starting Operation QUEST in 2006. Its prime objectives include improving the operational efficiency of the police force and to reduce unnecessary expenditures. As a result of this operation, Norfolk Constabulary alone has made a savings of £3 million while increasing the satisfaction level of the victims from 86 to 97 percent. (Pre-Budget Report 2008) Government is taking many other steps to enhance the capacity of the police force so that it becomes ready to meet deal with any kind of demand on its faculties. UK is also increasing its capacity in newer fields like dealing with the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear threats (CBRN). Following the use of chemical weapons in Iraq and the use of Sarin gas in Tokyo metro, in mid nineties, UK started training its personnel in to tackle such disasters. The scale of such preparations was further increased after the September 11 attack on USA. This specialized unit now has more than 7000 officers and is ready to deal with the calamities that might follow a CBRN attack. More sophisticated equipments, like protective gears and detection utilities have been provided to the forces to deal with such possibilities. (Pre-Budget Report 2008) There has been also been great advancement in technologies, like those of forensic sciences and information technology, which has been lapped up by the police department. For e.g. the introduction of advanced communication system now allows every police station in UK, to access central records electronically. Not only has these led to better investigation and crime detection it has also made the task of the police much easier. Forensic science is another field, which has greatly enhanced the crime detection power of the police forces. UK has always invested in such state of art laboratories, which are conversant with all the new emerging areas of forensic sciences. Steps are also being taken for providing better weaponry and equipments to help the police force in ably dealing with the criminals. The result of the efforts made by the Home Office for enhancing the capabilities of the police force has been evident in the British Crime Survey (BCS). The UK Government has a well-paced system in the form of BCS to measure public satisfaction for the services, which people receive from the police department. Framework for these systems is derived from the various goals mentioned under the public service agreements of the Home Office. This system further compares the level of satisfaction and performance of the police department in the previous years and suggestions are given cased on this data regarding how to improve services in the future. It not only collects data from the police record but also directly from the public wherein, such cases is also taken into consideration, which has not been reported to the police Analysis of BCS trend data shows that, in England and Wales, victims’ satisfaction with the police fell during the second half of the 1990s and stabilized at around 58% in the 00s. Result of the survey also suggests “the reported incidence of experience of crime fell from 40% to 23% between 1995 and 2005.” (Public Services Programme, 2009) In the last few decades the police forces across UK have implemented many reforms. The recruitment of officers have increased along with that there has also been more emphasis on racial awareness, so as to increase the level of satisfaction across the divergent communities of UK. Budgetary support has been increased substantially over the years and authorities have seriously tried to build better relationship between the common man and police by putting an end to controversial policies like ‘stop and search’. This shows the commitment of the police force in putting together the model of community based policing, where in the responsibility of internal security is being shared by the government and public together. Also there is a proper involvement of the people because ultimately it is they who are best suited to provide solutions to their own problems with the enabling help of the police. No job of police work is completed without effective intelligence gathering and effective sharing. In fact, police begins and also ends with it. Intelligence is the eye and year of the police force and its proper utilization is absolutely vital for early crime detection as well as prevention. Considering its importance, the home office took a major step in this direction in 2009. This has been the introduction of the Police National Database (PND). PND will be able to club together and provide intelligence across all the network of 43 forces in England and Wales. It has been designed to bring together the data from five operational areas of policing, namely “custody, crime, intelligence, child abuse and domestic abuse in to one central system.” (Heath, 2009) Police force in UK has been one of the last public departments to introduce the concept of New Public Management. This concept promotes centralized control over self-regulation and promotes risk management rather than rules enforcement. Due to concepts of traditional, legal and disciplinary procedures becoming largely nonviable, NPM is being viewed as the necessary measure to infuse professional management within the police force. (Metcalfe, 2006:71) Government has chalked out its major policy decisions in a report on Public Service reforms, 2006. It acknowledges that in the present scenario of an ever-changing dynamic world, the need for the public services has increased manifolds. Public now, demands better quality services from the government and its agencies, which are mostly funded from the tax collected from these very people. The report recognizes the need for the public services to cope up with the ever changing socio-economic and technological aspects taking place all around us. To deal with these exigencies, the government has started making substantial investments in public services. But the report also states that only making investments is not going to assure proper service to the public, instead, high quality service can be provided only when along with increased investment is accompanied by an improvement in efficiency of the personnel. Also, services should be provided in such a manner so that they are equitable, effective and constantly improving. Moreover these services should be available for everyone and must give the general public a feeling of empowerment. Government department employees can learn from their peers as well. For e.g. it was noted that the efficiency of the New York police department had increased after there were comparisons across the departments by sharing of experiences between the officers. Government is of the view that, the successful implementation of these reforms in the realms of public service will go a long way in achieving target of providing social justice and a better quality of life for the citizens of the country. The aim of the government of UK as stated in the report is to create a system of public service, which is essentially a combination of the government and civil society groups, which work together with the ultimate aim of improving the delivery of public services to the people. (The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. 2006) While there is an ever-increasing incidence of crime in the country, the police force has been trying hard to keep up with the same. Along with these steps taken by the government, many innovative steps are being taken at the local levels also. One of this is the crime line and the crime desk schemes, introduced in Norfolk County in early 1990’s. In the crime desk scheme, the police completed investigation on telephone itself, rather than deploying personnel. People also mostly responded favorably to this service. Later on properly trained civilians where also involved in it in place of regular officers, so as to save on the resources. (Jolowicz and Read, 1994) An innovative model of policing has also been taken up in Falkirk, Scotland. The programme has been named Mixed economy Policing and has been implemented, especially to deal with the problems of shortage of police personnel involved in crime investigation. Previously, crime investigation was the sole responsibility of front line police constables. A research conducted by the local police force showed nearly 90 percent of the cases do not require the use of police authority and hence does not require a uniformed police officer. Hence there was a considerable scope to save on the scant police personnel, by getting a mixture of front line police officers, which work as team leaders and specialist police staff working together. This model, which was first implemented in March 2008, has gone on to become a success in the area. This has also created supplementary and worthwhile career opening for specialist police staff. The front line officers have now being left with reduced workload and are able to perform better in crime investigation. Feedback from crime victims has also suggested that the quality of service, which they received, has been bettered. (Cosla Awards 2009) Various counties have taken steps and have also set up their own targets in these areas. In this context the steps taken by the county of Essex is quite commendable. Police force of the county of Essex has set up various targets for the period of 2007-10, most important of which is to bring down the crime rate by 15% till 2010. It also wishes to involve the people of the county in the process of policing by implementing innovative schemes, like special constable and neighborhood watch. The commendable approach of the county of Essex can be taken up in the other parts of U.K. as well. (Essex Police Authority and Essex Police, 2007) What More Can Be Done Police department can learn from other public services as well, one of them being the National Health Service (NHS). During the 1990’s, more than a million people were on waiting list to get treated and these were only those people who had registered themselves with the NHS. Main sufferers were the people who were in need of emergency services. As the demand for these services exceeded the supply, the victims had no choice but to wait in long queues. This was the situation until the reform of NHS was initiated in 2001. Under the program of Emergency Services Collaborative (ECS), emergency services are now expected to admit or discharge 98 percent of patients within four hours. Before the ESC was initiated, only about 65 percent of waiting patients got through the system in four hours. This big difference in service was made possible just by better forecasting of the demand. Earlier it was believed that forecasting of demand was nearly impossible. ECS has proved this to be incorrect. It was found that there are variations in the demand of emergency services on different days (e.g. public holiday) as well as on different times on a particular day. This was used effectively to streamline the emergency service to meet the requirements. Moreover all these were achieved without putting more manpower to work on these services. Hence, the target was achieved without compromising on the economies of scale. (Walley, 2006) This instance from the health care service can be utilized in the public domain of the police forces as well. All the management efforts mostly revolve around providing proper management of human and other resources, so that their services can be utilized properly and at such places where they are most required. It is well known that the resources will always remain short in comparison to their requirements. Hence the police department should emulate the National Health Service and go for appropriate demand forecasting and proper logistics management. Surveys should be carried out to locate the pattern and find out the incidence of the crimes. This should help in proper planning so as to enable the deployment of the assets of the police department properly so as to have the maximum capacity utilization. Another option to boost the delivery of service is to provide for an alternative. An interesting case in this field is the Florida A+ Programme, this programme gives children in schools who regularly fail, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), an opportunity to choose an alternative school. (Greene, and Winters, 2004) Similar facility can also be provided for the public while dealing with the police department. Hence, if they are not satisfied with the services of the local police force, then they will have a right to make appeal before police officials of some other locality. This will help in two ways. Firstly, if the people of a particular community are really not getting good services in a particular locality then this will be properly highlighted. On the other hand if it is the public, which is making unnecessary demands, then they will realize their mistake and ultimately return to their local police officers. Another alternative that can be looked into are the Private security Agencies. The government appointed police force cannot fulfill all the requirements, nor can they always provide security as a specialized service on demand, within their limited public budgets. It is here that the private security agencies whose members are properly trained and have licensed arms can come into use. The government agencies while remaining vested with the overall power of managing security, it will also act as the coordinator for the services of these private agencies, as and when required. (Evans, 2006) Management of operations can be done through various processes. They can be of the following types, namely, High volume, High variety, High variation and High visibility. High volume can expect economies of scale but has to be systematized. High Variety requires inbuilt flexibility to deal with the wide varieties of activities expected of them. High variation, on the other hand requires greater capability to manage manpower and other resources to deal with the rising and falling demands of the same, while high visibility happens where the customer is present in some way or the other when a task is being executed. Hence it becomes necessary to manage the perception of the customers. (Slack, Chambers, Johnston, and Betts, 2005: 2) Policing, being a public service, can apply this theory successfully. Thus, police force across its various departments needs to arrange its forces in accordance with these four factors. Proper forces and the resources should be deployed to deal with the volume, which again needs to be adjusted against variations. Also forces can be deployed according to their specialization to deal with those situations, where high variety complaints are to be dealt with. The police department might take an example from the Newcastle City Council which undertook landmark measures to keep in close contact with the public by setting by call centers and small customer service centers where calls and complains of individual citizens would be noted down and addressed thereafter. The local people may be involved in the process of setting up the centers like the case of Newcastle and thereby ensure a service, which is monitored by the civilians. (Wainwright and Little, 2009: 64) Public service is concerned with delivering service to the public, by understanding their needs, managing the whole process that delivers the service so as to ensure that the objectives and targets are fulfilled. Also one should constantly work towards providing better delivery of service. Although previously service was supposed to be the work of only those who have frontline dealing with the public, but now its scope has been enhanced to include the whole of the organization. While doing so the public departments should be concerned with both the Service Experience as well as the Service Outcome. Service Experience is actually how the victim feels regarding the service provided by the department, i.e. whether the staff was courteous, or whether the victims were dealt without reasonable delay. Service Outcome on the other hand tells us whether the victim has actually benefited from the service. Hence the target should be to satisfy both these parameters. Fast and helpful staff of the department must substantiate the successful outcome. (Johnston, and Clark, 2005: 8) Conclusion Basic job of police service has always been to provide security and to earn the trust of the community at large. The tryst of the police department to prevent crimes and to fight terrorism will always depend upon how much trust are they able to garner from the public. Whether it’s fighting local criminals or dealing with international terrorism, success will depend on their ability to create trust, which will only happen when communities feel that their priorities and concerns are being efficiently dealt with. Police department must also drive home the fact that public safety is not only the job of police but the entire community must be involved with it. Police force must create enough opportunity for the public in general to be able to work together with the police in both prevention and solving of crimes. As the old saying goes that prevention is better than cure, similarly in this case if a crime can be prevented then its social and economic benefits can also be felt at large. Active participation of society with police in preventing crime can go a long way in achievement of this objective. The partnership between police and public should extend to various public institutions like schools, local organizations, hospitals and community centres etc. While the government is doing its best to remove the bottlenecks of its department the onus also lies with the various civil society groups, NGO’s and independent bodies like the Human Rights Watch groups, which can provide valuable suggestions in enhancing the service quality of the police group by giving valuable suggestions. Along with this, professionalism and a sense of pride in duty should be engrained within the police officers, which also must be well trained and given proper authority to deal with all possible circumstances. Policing also needs to adapt it to future requirements and undergo necessary changes from time to time. Instead of forced changes from outside, the responsibility lays with the police services to change itself on its own, so that it is able to fulfill its duties and remain accountable to all those its serves. References 1. ACPO, (2004). “GUIDANCE ON INVESTIGATING DOMESTIC ABUSE”, NPIA, available at: http://www.acpo.police.uk/asp/policies/Data/Domestic_Abuse_2008.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2009) 2. Cosla Awards (2009). “Mixed Economy Policing – Priority Crime Unit”, Central Scotland Police, available at: www.cosla.gov.uk/attachments/excellence/2009/2009SWF01MixedEconomyPolicingb.doc (accessed on May 24, 2009) 3. Essex Police Authority and Essex Police, (2007). “Three-Year Strategy Plan 2007-2010”, available at: http://www.essex.police.uk/cms/global/documents/lts07_lo.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2009) 4. Evans, P. 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Public Services Programme, (2009). “The Police under Public Scrutiny-Experiences, Perceptions and Reactions to a Public Service Institution 1982-2003”, available at: http://www.publicservices.ac.uk/research/the-police-under-public-scrutiny-experiences-perceptions-and-reactions-to-a-public-service-institution-1982-2003/ (accessed on May 24, 2009) 14. “Public Service Review Home Affairs – Issue 14”, (2006), The Information Portal for the Public Sector, available at: http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=6193&topic=Defence (accessed on May 24, 2009) 15. Slack, N., Chambers, S., Johnston, R. and A. Betts, 2005. Operations & Process Management: Principles and Practice for Strategic Impact, NJ: Prentice Hall, Prentice Hall 16. The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. (2006). “UK government’s approach to Public Service Reforms”, Cabit Office, available at: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/strategy/assets/sj_pamphlet.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2009) 17. Walley, P., Silvester, K. and Conway, J. (2006). “Managing Variation in Demand”, Journal of Healthcare Management 51:5 September/October, Available at: http://www.ihi.org/NR/rdonlyres/141DA598-5FED-4E6A-98C1-8EE629D2B41A/0/WalleyACHE.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2009) 18. Wainwright, H. and M. Little, (2009) Public service reform….but not as we know it, Great Britain: Picnic Publication, available at: http://www.tni.org/books/publicservicereform.pdf? (accessed on May 24, 2009). Appendix A. Top Down Performance Management Has A Key Role In The Government’s Approach To Service Reform Source: (Piatt, 2006: 14) Appendix B Comparison of the “Top Down” performance management, which the Government has tried to address Source: (Piatt. 2006: 15) Appendix C Source: National Statistics, 2008:1-2 Read More