The File Management Revolution
As file management centres roll out around the country, some are saying it’s the single biggest change to police processing procedures since the introduction of the Whanganui computer system in 1976. And with all the upheaval Police have been through in the past decade or so, that’s a big call. Ellen Brook reports.
Police are finally rolling out the revolution in police paperwork they have been talking about for years. File management centres (FMCs) are springing up rapidly in Police districts, drawing in work from separate stations into single, centralised hubs.
At the end of October, all 12 Police districts are due to have centralised file management.
The philosophy behind the change is to reduce and streamline paperwork done by frontline staff.
With fewer responsibilities for form filling and file preparation, uniformed staff are freed up for more frontline work. In conjunction with the increased use of smart technology and changes to rostering, it’s a three-pronged push to get the constabulary out of the muster room and on to the street – increasing their presence in the public eye and slotting into the Prevention First strategy.
The FMCs also dovetail with the crime reporting line and the investigative support units and work closely with the criminal justice support units. All processing of volume crime files will go through the FMCs.
While Police are pleased as Punch with the concept – it ticks the boxes for efficiency and savings – some staff have paid the price in terms of their employment.
Most have all been offered work in the new centres, but not all have been able to take up the jobs, either because they are unable to relocate or the required shift work hours do not suit them.
The days of each little police station in a district doing their own file entries in their own way are gone. And, as our own Iam Keen notes this month (see page 210), there’ll be “no more softening up the typists for an urgent job with home-baked delicacies”.
There will also be less job demarcation; FMC staff are expected to be generalists, not specialists as in days gone by. While typing is a still a priority task, such staff may also be called on to do other duties, or be rotated around positions.
It certainly feels like the end of an era, and there’s no doubt that members have felt the pain and upheavals that go with such restructuring.
Meanwhile, others, particularly those on the frontline, are embracing the changes, thanking the “file fairy” for taking over their dreaded paperwork.
The centralisation model has already been implemented in Auckland (it was the first FMC off the rank in 2006), Counties Manukau (2009), Canterbury (Feb 2012), Eastern (March 2012), Waitemata (April 2012), Northland (June 2012), Central (August 2012). The Waikato and Bay of Plenty FMCs are scheduled for the end of September and by the end of October, Wellington, Tasman and Southern will complete the restructure.
Central District
In Central District, the FMC opened for business in Palmerston North on August 1. Inspector Peter Thurston, who has been overseeing the project there, says he agrees about the significance of the change.
“This is the biggest restructure ever in this district. It’s a whole shift in procedure. We are doing it smarter. Officers do not need to be involved after filing their reports.”
From his point of view the benefits are tangible right from the get-go and are part of the evolution of policing in his district and beyond.
He says the non-sworn job losses in his area have, fortunately, been minimal. Many of the redundancies were voluntary and other staff were happy to make the move to Palmerston North.
The Palmerston North FMC was modelled on the Napier FMC, running since March. Mr Thurston said Palmerston North was able to learn from the Eastern experience – what worked, what didn’t work and what could be improved on.
He’s happy with progress so far, which included building a new addition to the Central District Headquarters to accommodate the centre, including its 21 staff (three sections of six with one supervisor for each section) and 17 kilometres of cabling. The centre is operating 16 hours a day, seven days a week, from 7am to 11pm. That will be the norm for all districts except Auckland and Counties Manakau, which run their FMCs 24/7.
The compiling of police files has always been notoriously idiosyncratic. Each station, big or small, has or had its own way of doing the job from the data entry to the minuting, archiving and storing of files. Nationally and between districts, this sometimes made it difficult to not only find files, but to be confident about the quality of cross-referencing for intel purposes.
It also meant having to make contact with dozens of different people to track down reports. The hope now is that there will be just 12 FMC OCs to contact.
Gatekeepers of data
The new thinking on file management is that the FMCs are the gatekeepers of data and intel-led policing is dependent on the quality of that data – that is, how accurate and relevant it is.
Centralisation of data, all processed in the same way, is considered beneficial for the integrity of the information.
A file report from a frontline officer can range from a simple noting to a full homicide file. As with any reporting and filing system, the process is multi-layered.
Prior to the FMCs, the procedure (which might vary from station to station) for an average arrest, say an EBA (excess breath alcohol), would be: arrest; return to police station custody unit; arrange for bail; prepare the file by either filling out a form or making a computer data entry.
Paperwork might end up being passed around the building. An average arrest might take two hours of processing; a defended file even longer; and a top-end arrest could take all day.
Now, after a standard arrest, such as an EBA, processing at the station can take as little as 20 minutes. The officer can use Winscribe to record the details and then scan his or her notebook or any other relevant documents. That is picked up at the FMC, compiled into a file and then electronically returned to the station for checking. If a signature is required, a hard copy is printed out.
In Eastern District, the OC, Senior Sergeant Wendy Clere, says frontline staff routinely use Winscribe. She emphasises, however, that along with efficiency back at the station, police officers are now being encouraged to “do a proper job” prior to filing their reports. For example, making sure they have gathered all the witness statements at the time and not having to go back a week or so later to fill in the gaps.
Skill levels
Few would argue with the improvement in time management, but there are some philosophical concerns about the implications for policing and skill levels down the track.
Detective Sergeant Ash Gurney, based at Palmerston North CIB, says that while he generally supports the concept of FMCs, he is reserving judgment about their impact on the organisation’s ability to “grow well-rounded police officers”. By that, he means officers who can “empathise with victims of crime, investigate where necessary, originate and develop preventative measures to address local issues, and ultimately progress through our organisation to be future leaders”.
He says he fears that because of attendance/reporting pressures created by FMCs, and the perception that uniformed officers should always be on the street, frontline officers may become more entrenched in the P1 culture of “flying” to jobs, taking a report, arresting an offender, then “flinging it at some other person (FMC) before going on to the next P1 job”.
“In my opinion, this devolves the ‘ownership and partnership’ that the Prevention First model seeks to achieve. That becomes the problem of the specialist groups such as neighbourhood policing teams rather than the entire constabulary.
“Further, from my CIB view, it does not provide encouragement for our grassroots, i-car general duties members to be challenged by all facets of police work from attendance to basic investigation (following up a lead), enforcement and prosecution work that most of the current senior managers have been involved with at some stage of their careers.”
Mr Gurney says he is also concerned there will be consequences for investigations and prosecutions, such as supervisors having to spend more time training investigators and correcting errors.
The issues he raises have not gone unnoticed by the current decision-makers. Not that anything will stop the rise of the FMCs, but in Eastern District at least there is a plan to rotate frontline police through the CJSU so they can learn about correct file preparation.
Champion for change |
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Catherine Gardner, the workstream lead for case management at Police National Headquarters, who has overseen the rollout of the centres, helped set up the first FMC in Auckland in 2006. She says she was never in any doubt that centralisation was the way to go. The former London bobby had come to New Zealand in 2002 with the aim of joining the frontline, but earlier spinal surgery ruled that out. Instead, she worked in case management where she honed her ideas about what she saw as a lack of focus on the victims of crime in New Zealand. As an example, she says that, back then, in Auckland, if a burglary was reported, an officer might not attend till three or four days later; a “desultory” report would be entered into the National Intelligence Archive and the victim might not hear anything for six months. Meanwhile, the victim would have filed an insurance claim for which a police report was required and when that time came, it was hard to find. The quality of the data and how it was being entered was chaotic, disparate and inconsistent, she says. The data entry was coming in from many different watch houses, and was often either the bare minimum or incomplete. And, with the vagaries of the previous Whanganui computer system to contend with prior to NIA, sometimes a file might never be recovered. The introduction of NIA in the early 2000s signalled the start of intel-led policing, which required much higher standards of file management. Ms Gardner says Auckland District was the logical place to implement a centralised FMC. It has volume, but is a geographically small area. As the officer in charge she was able to oversee the improvement in service that she had envisaged. All victims were to be sent an acknowledgement form with a file reference number and the FMC wrote to every victim of crime giving them a 24/7 phone number to contact police and the name of a police officer they could talk to. For Ms Gardner, the philosophy behind the centres came down to three words: honesty, empathy and timeliness. That was combined with being champions for NIA and for raising the profile of case management work, she says. The changes didn’t come easy to everyone. Ms Gardner acknowledges that “a paradigm shift” in police thinking – putting the victims first, not the offenders – and shifting away from a paper to an electronic office “has been devastating for some people, and a huge cultural shift in policing”. From her point of view, however, the benefits are tangible, not just for the public, but for constabulary and non-constabulary staff. She cites more frontline officers on the street, more sergeants supervising staff instead of doing paperwork, FMC support clerks (previously called records clerks) rebanded from A to B and with a career path available to them, and upskilling of staff in the vital area of case management. |
For at least one Police staff member, the value of file management centres has never been in question.
From the frontline |
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Anecdotal evidence is that frontline police couldn’t be happier with the FMC concept. And who can blame them? Was there ever a police officer who joined up because he was excited about filling out forms and filing paperwork? The average file holdings for frontline officers in some stations could be up to 20. Today, at Eastern District, that’s down to either a handful or none at all. After processing an arrest in extra quick time, and sending the details to the FMC, the officers at the Napier watch house say they may never see the paperwork again, unless there is some action needed on it. And, thanks to the introduction of Winscribe technology (basically a telephone recording device), some frontline officers have been able to dispense with typing altogether, simply picking up the phone and dictating their report, which is then processed by the FMC. Eastern FMC OC Senior Sergeant Wendy Clere says that if an officer is assigned to an early shift, then he or she should potentially have all their files resolved by the end of their shift. As with a lot of new technology, younger staff are often the quickest to adapt, but even older officers are only too glad to spend less time typing and more time on the beat. “It’s made us more pro-active” is the message from the Napier watch house. |
