Policing the police with Employee Management Software
North Wales Police to increase ‘feet on the beat’ and save half a million pounds across next two years
North Wales Police (NWP) has rolled out an employee management software solution
to help increase the number of officers ‘feet on the beat’ and improve
its service to the community.
The employee management solution from Crown Computing called Open Options removes previously time consuming and error prone manual staff scheduling and processes with a centralised IT system that ensures that police officers and specialists are consistently available when and where they are needed. By reducing the administrative burden NWP expects to save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
The ‘duty management’ project has been rolled out to 1500 police officers and 1,000 police staff in North Wales (a large geographical area that is home to 650,000 people) since last July and will now go live full-time as part of the NWP’s Aquarius project, created to ensure effective public policing through the use of modern technology.
The technology will provide an efficient and accurate way of scheduling staff making sure that they spend as much time as possible working within the community. An increasing issue as staff roles involve tasks as varied as court appearances, football matches, drug operations, murder hunts as well as for training days and absences including illness and holidays.
Open Options will also link directly to payroll ensuring smooth payment for officers and making the allocation of overtime fairer while also ensuring that NWP meet the European Working Time Directive. It will help to make it easier for NWP to organise and administer flexible working schemes for staff.
Ruth Purdie, Acting Superintendent at North Wales Police said:
‘Open Options can interface with existing systems either local or national to provide police forces with real-time information that will make them more efficient in managing absence and abstraction rates, improve performance and provide a better quality of service to the public. Open Options can deal with all the complexities of police regulations while reducing paper work levels. This equates to more time in the community for police officers. We estimate saving at least £400,000 worth of administration time over the next two years.’
Purdie added:
‘We certainly didn’t want officers spending unnecessary time in front of computers rather than out in the community tackling crime. Open Options allows us to handle time and attendance exceptions easily and quickly which will certainly help to reduce the administrative burden and get more ‘feet on the beat’.’
Notes to editors
About the Acquarius project
The review project Acquarius recommended the introduction of a number of systems that would enable NWP to provide a better service to the public and at the same time hit the Government target of 3% efficiency savings that could then be re-invested into front-line policing. Within the next few years NWP will see the introduction of a sophisticated Command and Control System, Mobile Data Tablets that will provide data access to officers in vehicles and on foot and a new Duty Management System.
About Crown Computing:
Crown Computing, is the UK's leading supplier of advanced Employee Management Software. With over 200 clients across manufacturing, financial, public sector, distribution and service sectors, Crown is a proven specialist in its market and its customer base comprises some of the UK's most prestigious blue-chip companies.
Crown's uncompromising attitude to quality and commitment to excellence ensures its software adds real value to businesses. All services and products are approved to ISO 9001 under the guidance of TickIT.
For further information contact:
Julia Legge
Crown Computing
Tel: (01827) 309800
Fax: (01827) 309810
jleg@crowncomputing.co.uk
Lighthouse PR
Kevin Lelland
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7968 4949
klelland@lighthousepr.com
