MET modernisation programme update

Report: 12
Date: 6 December 2007
By: Director of Strategy and Modernisation on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report provides members with an update of progress on the Met Modernisation Programme (MMP), specifically on how equality and diversity principles are embedded in, and central to the process.

A. Recommendations

That members

1. note how the MMP has developed since the last report provided to this Board in January 2007

2. note how the MPS is assessing the tangible impact of the Together programme

3. advise on how to strengthen further the engagement of all committees in working with the MPS to realise the benefits of the biggest set of changes in its history

B. Supporting information

Background

1. This report provides an overview of the MMP progress overall, especially in terms of benefits and focuses on specific areas known to be of interest to EODB from the commissioning brief.

2. Through the implementation of the Met Modernisation Programme, a range of complex and major change programmes have been developed and implemented geared towards improved performance and better use of resources. This programme has overseen the implementation of Safer Neighborhoods Teams, the completion of the C3i phase of the Central Communications Command (CCC) and the establishment of the Met Intelligence Bureau. Work planned under the Information Quality portfolio should deliver significant reductions in support costs and other efficiency savings by the end of 2007/08. Efficiency savings over the 2005/08 period are projected to deliver significantly above the 3% target over the same time frame.

3. The 2007/08 portfolio comprises a combination of public facing programmes such as Citizen Focus and Public Protection combined with enabling infrastructure programmes such as C3i and Transforming HR.

4. The MMP Portfolio for 2008/09 is currently being developed (see Appendix 1) and will include programmes such as:

• Criminal Justice reform (as a new addition)
• Improving Police information (recognising that Information Quality is just a part of managing and improving police information)
• reducing serious violence and protecting young people (recognising how the aims of Public Protection will contribute towards the challenge of reducing serious violence).

5. In addition Citizen Focus, Counter Terrorism Command Implementation, Olympic Security Directorate, Together, Transforming HR and the Finance and Resources Review are areas of major business change and in many cases anticipated benefits will begin to be delivered during 2008/09. Finally there are the programmes where the benefits should become realisable. These are Intelligence, Covert Policing and Tasking, C3i/CCC and Safer Neighbourhoods.

6. A more detailed commentary on the benefits already delivered under MMP will go before MPA Full Authority in February 2008.

Performance and accountability

7. The benefits described by each of the programmes are geared to improving performance. Many of the benefits from programmes such as Safer Neighbourhoods, C3i, Together and Intelligence, Covert Policing and Tasking are focused on improving service provision particularly in relation to community engagement, confidence and satisfaction. While specific measures for these programmes are still under development, clear improvement was seen in the performance areas these programmes are designed to impact throughout 2007/08:

• the gap between BME satisfaction and overall satisfaction is reducing
• confidence in the MPS is increasing and
• user satisfaction has generally improved considerably

8. The measures for the first quarter of 2007/08 from the Safer Neighbourhoods survey show that satisfaction with local police visibility had improved to 52%, the feeling of security in local area by day and night has held steady at 96% and 73% respectively, residents satisfaction with identification and resolution of local issues has remained high (64%) as has satisfaction with the way the local neighbourhood is policed (57%). The measure relating to concern about anti-social behaviour has fluctuated and has risen slightly to 38% for the first quarter of 2007/08.

9. These benefits and performance measures form part of the remit of the Programme Delivery Board which is the primary decision making body of the MMP. Management Board prioritise the MMP Portfolio in accordance with the MPA/MPS corporate strategy. The MPA Oversight Group meets on a monthly basis and provides a crucial role in steering and overseeing the direction and impact of the programme.

Together

10. A major part of the project management framework adopted within the MMP is for projects and programmes of work to define their benefits so that the success of the project can be monitored and the maximum return on investment achieved.

11. As part of the MPS business planning process, Together has three strategic objectives for the 2007/08 - 2008/09 financial years:

• To deliver a demonstrable improvement in the quality of leadership
• To put the MPS first and work across boundaries bringing different groups/teams together to achieve goals
• To ensure that the connection between operational activity and the Values is clear to all staff

12. Following the first challenging 12 months in embedding the values of “Together” there has been a significant acceleration in products being delivered, for example the Team Leader programme (aimed at first and second line managers).

13. The Command Leader and Programme Leader values based leadership programmes were subsequently launched in April 2007 and 4 and 6 programmes respectively were scheduled for the first year. The Command Leader programme is provided for Chief Superintendent and Band A level and the Programme Leader programme is intended for DACs, Commanders, Director and Band S level, working with Management Board. In addition, modules on Leading complexity and risk in the MPS, Delivering Performance, Running your business, developing your people, exploring partnership potential and leading projects and programmes will be made available. To date 90 Command Leader people and 45 Programme Leaders people have attended the programmes.

14. The Together team working with the MMP Benefits Team have identified four programme level benefits:

• Improved capability in leadership and people skills
• Maximising staff potential
• Less silo working
• Improved organisational learning and information sharing.

15. The Together SMT have agreed the end benefits for Together and these will be measured through the targeted “Your views count” staff survey.

Leadership and effective management

16. The LA was launched in June 2006, as part of Together. The first course was targeted at newly promoted first and second line managers (Team Leaders) across the MPS. Whilst providing practical leadership skills which delegates can apply at work, the key emphasis is upon enabling delegates to lead in a way consistent with the MPS Values. To date, 1004 people have completed the programme.

17. Leadership Academy local represents the next stage of delivery for the LA. The three main aims of LA local are:

• To provide MPS officers and staff in leadership roles with the skills and tools of effective leadership
• To engage officers and staff at the local level in helping make the MPS a more Values consistent workplace
• To ensure that the connection between operational activity and the Values is clear to all staff.

18. Benefits mapping workshops have been held with individual Leadership Academy (LA) project teams to determine how specific project outputs will contribute to programme level benefits, in turn, organizational performance.

19. The LA local pilots have been established at four specific evaluation sites on Boroughs (Hillingdon, Hackney, Greenwich and Wandsworth) as well as CCC to test the approach and effectiveness. The evaluation study is expected to be complete mid 2008. Early activity is focusing significantly on community and partnership working. Cross borough networking activities are taking place, community information is being integrated and analysed and relationships are being developed with external organsiations. The Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate is working in partnership with the Leadership Academy to offer practical interventions to suppport boroughs and improve performance.

20. There is significant evidence that officers and staff are seeing the value of the LA Local interventions. Feedback received has indicated that officers and staff are giving the project a chance to make the difference. All communication is primarily face to face by the SMT. There is a level of commitment and buy in from BOCU Commanders and SMTs. The move from cynic to champion is becoming evident. The key emerging success of the project is the tailoring of the project to local needs.

Equalities Impact Assessment

21. An Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) is conducted as part of the planning process within each project and programme following criteria developed by the Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate. Project/programme managers take ownership for assessing and monitoring the potential impact on the programme guided by the Modernisation Delivery Unit (MDU), the core team co-ordinating implementation of MMP.

22. If no impact is identified then this is appropriately documented. If the impact is identified as unjustifiably adverse, discriminatory, or fails to promote the positive aspects, then alternatives and/or amendments are considered, a process that has not been required to date. Completed EIA forms are attached to key project documents (including the Business Case).

23. EIAs completed for Safer Neighbourhoods, Together, and Olympics (high priority programmes) were circulated to the MPA in January and these have not been revisited since that time. Many of the Olympics business cases are still under development and there will be an updated EIA attached to those documents.

Handling complaints

24. The Professional Standards Support Programme (PSSP) continues to drive through the prevention and organisational learning message together with training programmes and briefings. It has similar strategic objectives to those of Together, Transforming HR and Citizen Focus, namely encouraging local line managers to take greater responsibility for the performance of their staff and delivering better quality policing through learning from previous mistakes. These overlaps will allow maximum opportunities to be developed from the programmes.

Active Communication

25. The MDU Communications Team is responsible for co-ordinating active communication and engagement in relation to MMP programmes and projects. Work is now being carried out to establish a standard operating model for communicating business change, which promotes greater engagement and involvement activities. To deliver this a network of business change communicators has been established which meets monthly to share good practice and receive training in all aspects of change communications, including effective stakeholder management.

26. Work is being undertaken to identify ways in which business change principles can be fed into the work of the Leadership academy, particularly the Command Leader and Programme Leader programmes. The MDU communication team and Directorate of Information (DoI) are creating development modules for the 5 identified levels of leaders within the organisation. The development packages include learning from mature MMP programmes where change communications have worked well or could have been improved. The DoI’s communication team model for communicating business change will be adapted, in consultation with colleagues across the organisation to create MPS wide standards in this area.

27. Communicating business change principles will form part of a wider review into the way in which Programme Management can operate more effectively across the MPS and we will capture organisational learning from the communication activities of mature MMP programmes and projects such as C3i and Safer Neighbourhoods. The review will also consider capability to provide in-house development and training in the proposed corporate standards and principles. Progress on all of this work is to be reported to the MMP PDB.

28. The MDU have continued to hold quarterly live intranet forums giving staff the opportunity to ask questions and raise issues directly with Stephen Rimmer. Three forums have been held so far this year producing a total of 66 questions. Colleagues from across the organisation can also ask questions or provide feedback on modernisation via the MMP intranet site. There is a dedicated modernisation email box that is monitored by the MDU communication team who provide a response to the questions and feedback. The issues received are also fed back to the programmes and projects.

29. A staff survey entitled “Your views count” which is being run in partnership with Ipsos MORI was introduced in July 2007. This will allow the MPS to seek the views of its staff on the following themes; Working for the MPS, Our values, Where I work, My line manager and My job. This is a focussed survey designed to get high level feedback that can be acted upon. The survey does not attempt to seek the views of all staff at one time but involves a number of staff being randomly selected each month to receive an e mail link to the survey. The results of the first quarter are due to be published towards the end of November 2007 (an update should be available at the meeting). It will be important to make the links between the results from this survey and the values and anticipated benefits of Together.

30. Engaging with frontline colleagues remains a key aspect of the MMP communications strategy. Stephen Rimmer and members of the MDU regularly visit operational units across the MPS and information gained on these visits is shared with the programmes and projects and informs the work of the MDU. The MDU communications team is also currently conducting a survey with frontline colleagues concerning the effectiveness of change communications the results of which will go to PDB in January.

31. The Met Modernisation intranet site has been refreshed to reflect a greater focus on effective programme and project management to support colleagues throughout the organisation. The site also promotes the modernisation narrative, see Appendix 2, (created in September 2007 in consultation with senior colleagues across the organisation), which highlights why the organisation needs to change and the benefits this will bring to the people London.

Engagement

32. Following feedback at the SAMURAI conference in March Stephen Rimmer now holds quarterly meetings with staff association representatives to discuss modernisation issues. Stephen Rimmer also continues to chair a monthly meeting held with senior representatives from the Federation, Superintendents Association and police staff unions. From December Richard Riley will chair these meetings as well as the monthly Met modernisation meeting with selected BOCU/OCU Commanders. The latter group has provided a key operational perspective on how the totality of change is impacting the frontline.

33. Feedback from staff at Commissioner’s Briefings has also reinforced the need for an effective means of capturing valuable ideas and suggestions from staff engaged in day-to-day service delivery. Accordingly a staff suggestion scheme is being developed. Particular emphasis will be placed on encouraging and evaluating contributions from frontline officers and staff. At the suggestion of a member of MPS the scheme will be known as “Ideas for Action”. It will be a non-paper based system and work is underway to develop a suitable interim technical solution with the expectation that a demonstration/pilot system will be available for test by December 2007.

34. A number of programmes within the Met Modernisation Portfolio are designed to meet and exceed public expectations of the service that the MPS provides. To this end ‘citizen development panels’ were held for Workforce Modernisation and the Quality Call back process (part of the Citizen Focus Programme) to gain a better understanding of service users’ expectations. The latter also held a number of development panels with MPS staff at practitioner level and members of the public who had been victims of crime in the 3 months prior to the panel.

35. Individual programmes are responsible for managing the stakeholders within their programmes and thus for engaging with the public where appropriate, supported by the MDU where required. Whilst there have been no further citizen development panels there are examples of community engagement from other programmes:

• Ward panels within Safer Neighbourhoods and their role in selecting local priorities and monitoring the team’s progress against these.
• Borough Based Custody Centre programme also presents its’ plans to the public to understand the impact on them locally.
• The final example is the Security Programme for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. Although still to be fully scoped Community Engagement represents one of the five workstreams of the Programme.

36. The MPS is seeking to develop its horizon scanning capability and enhancing our understanding of the implications to the MPS of changing/emerging communities.

Self-defined Ethnicity (SDE)

37. Self-defined ethnicity (SDE) was an issue raised within Planning and Performance Review Committee (PPRC) in November 2006 which itself was in the context of a scrutiny of the Criminal Recording Information System (CRIS).

38. The report submitted to PPRC indicated that there are three key issues to be tackled around the recording of SDE:

• some reluctance for reporting officers to 'press' people in telling them what they think their ethnicity is
• telephone reporting is the area of highest non-compliance
• confusion to reporting officers as to what is mandatory and non mandatory (within the context of the CRIS system itself)

39. A workshop was held in August 2007 to discuss a range of issues relating to how officers record information to which they do not have access and this included SDE for victims. SDE is mandatory on the Accused screen of CRIS and on the suspect screen if a suspect is arrested. It is not mandatory on the Victim screen as there are numerous victims who are not necessarily spoken to by police due to the use of internet reporting, third party reporting etc.

40. The possibility of making the field mandatory for Victims was raised by the Data Quality Team but after discussions with the CRIS User group it was decided to monitor compliance for a few months and to discuss the way forward with Telephone Investigation Bureau (TIB) users.

41. Whilst appropriate authority and funding from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Home Office would enable the necessary adjustments to be made to CRIS, making the field mandatory does not always achieve the required result. If the field is mandatory and the user doesn’t know the answer, or doesn’t ask the victim (if on the phone or even face to face) they will input any answer just to get past a mandatory field. In view of this, these changes are not planned at present.

Victim Focus Units

42. Citizen Focused Policing is about improving the way the MPS understands, communicates with and engages with its communities, whether as direct users of services or as members of the wider public. It is a way of working that puts the requirements of citizens at the heart of decision making and is integral to everything the MPS does. The Citizen Focus Programme is a key element of the 2007 - 2010 MPS Corporate Strategy.

43. In January it was reported that the Victim Focus Units (VFU) were being rolled out, staffed by Victim Police Community Support Officers (VPCSOs) and that specific recruitment for these staff was to start towards the end of that month. Information collected during the recruitment process shows that 40% of the VPCSOs are male and 59% female. Of these staff 57 % have declared that they are from Black or minority ethnic groups and the remaining 43% from a white background.

44. At the time of writing 32 out of the planned 36 units are live, with the remaining units going live soon. A total of 11 units currently have their full compliment of VPCSOs; the remainder are operational and subject to ongoing recruitment and deployment. Recruitment into the role is ongoing monthly and interest remains strong. Currently there are 103.5 VPCSOs in post. The total staff level will be 152 when fully staffed.

45. Victim Support referrals have increased from 63% in March 2007 to 75% in October 2007. There have been positive responses to VFU contact received from victims of crime. They have improved recording of victim contact details allowing investigators to update victims using their preferred means.

Organisational Learning

46. Assistant Commissioner John Yates (Operational Services) has been appointed as the MPS Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for Organisational Learning and to oversee, currently through the July Review Group, the application of the organisation's business and operational model for Organisational Learning.

C. Race and equality impact

This report considers throughout the race and equality implications of the MMP.

D. Financial implications

MMP programmes and project will require continued investment throughout 2008/09. Business Cases will be duly considered at Investment Board.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Michael Debens, MPS

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Abbreviations

ACPO

Association of Chief Police Officers

BME

Black and Minority Ethnic

BOCU

Borough Operational Command Unit

CCC

Central Communications Command

CRIS

Criminal Recording Information System

DAC

Deputy Assistant Commissioner

DoI

Directorate of Information

EIA

Equality Impact Assessment

HR

Human Resources

LA

Leadership Academy

MDU

Modernisation Delivery Unit

MMP

Met Modernisation Programme

PDB

Programme Delivery Board

PPR

Planning and Performance Review Committee

PSSP

Professional Standards Support Programme

SDE

Self-Defined Ethnicity

SMT

Senior Management Team

SRO

Senior Responsible Officer

TIB

Telephone Investigation Bureau

VFU

Victim Focus Units

VPCSOs

 Victim Police Community Support Officers

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