denotes premium content | Oct 13 2008 Feature
posted 1 Mar 2000 in Volume 3 Issue 6
Knowledge on the beat
Despite the strong
association of knowledge management with private sector businesses, its
principles can easily be translated and applied to organisations in the public
domain. In the following article Phil Scutchings explains how SPIKE (Surrey
Police Information and Knowledge Environment) has revolutionised the way the
Surrey Police Force fights crime.
Knowledge management in the public
and private sectors
Most of the well known examples of knowledge management are those found
in large multi-national private sector organisations, where the benefits of this
activity can be more readily related to improvements in organisational
profitability. In the public sector, the justification for investment in
knowledge management is more difficult to make because the benefits are harder
to quantify, and there is a lack of a single focusing factor such as bottom line
profitability. However, with the challenges that face the public sector, (e.g.
continuing budget pressures, growing customer expectations and demands, and -
particularly within the policing arena - new government legislation such as the
Crime and Disorder Act), the ability for organisations to continue functioning
in their traditional manner is no longer a viable option in the longer
term.
Knowledge
and information management becomes an imperative for survival, and the means by
which to transform a traditional organisation into a 'virtual' organisation that
is able to re-shape itself to respond effectively to future challenges.
At Surrey Police this
activity has been underway since 1996, but to understand why a county police
force should be at the forefront of knowledge and information management
(winning awards from the Smithsonian Institute for Innovation, 1998 eBusiness
Award for Collaboration, the IM98 Award for GIS, and the IM99 Award for Mobile
Computing), it is necessary to understand something of the nature of the
business and how it is undertaken.
The Surrey business
model
Surrey Police has a unique policing system that is based upon problem
solving, local responsibility and ownership by officers of specific geographic
areas of territory, and three levels of policing. The objectives of this system
are very simple: to reduce the overall crime rate, and the associated fear of
crime, and hence to provide a stable law abiding community. This is achieved not
purely by traditional 'level 1/reactive' policing, with the associated flashing
blue lights and sirens responding to emergency calls, but also through the use
of 'level 2/prevention' activities, using intelligence-led policing, and
through 'level 3/reduction' techniques. These latter seek to stop crime occurring in the
first place, either through the use of problem-solving policing or by working
with partner agencies and local authorities to identify, address and eliminate
the causes of crime. Indeed, success at levels 2 and 3 leads to a reduction in
activity at level 1, with the consequent fall in resource demands, providing the
ability to devote further resources to levels 2 and 3, thus creating a virtuous
circle.
That the
Surrey policing system is effective is clearly demonstrated by the fact that
Surrey currently has the lowest crime rate in England. However, as you move
through levels 1, 2 and 3 of the policing model, each becomes more information
intensive, and therefore, to continue the development of the policing system in
the problem solving arena, it became essential to effectively manage the
organisation's information. This requirement, combined with the need to maintain
and improve the organisation's performance (and to respond to the budget and
legislative pressures that were arising), meant that effective knowledge
management was also essential to support the necessary changes in traditional
methods of operation and organisational structure.
Knowledge management - basic
elements and the 4Ps
The perspective and experiences of Surrey Police have established that
there are four elements that interact with each other in the management of
knowledge, and four types of knowledge creation and development (the 4Ps). The
four key aspects of knowledge management are:
Information
The basic
building block of items of structured and unstructured data placed in an
appropriate context for the user.
People (skills and
experience)
The skills and practical experience that staff have in
undertaking the roles in which they are asked to operate, and which they can
apply to the information they have obtained or with which they are
provided.
Personal ability
The position of the individual in the
organisation, both in the hierarchy enabling action to be initiated, and the
their ability to influence their peers, juniors, and seniors.
Culture
The
values and patterns of acceptable behaviour of the organisation; its willingness
to encourage or discourage staff to be innovative, and to promulgate best
practice based upon collaborative input and practical demonstration.
Of these four elements
the ones most amenable to immediate action for knowledge management are
information and people (skills & experience). These two form the twin
pillars of our knowledge architecture. Personal ability and culture both require
long term action. Precisely how much will vary from organisation to organisation
depending on the current state of development, but progress with both elements
can be accelerated by effective information management and a human resources
strategy that is focused on developing competency based job roles.
As well the four
elements of knowledge management, there are also the 4 Ps, reflecting the
methods of knowledge creation and knowledge types. They are:
Participative
This is at the heart of all knowledge creation.
It involves the active participation of practitioners of a particular activity
and other interested parties (e.g. customers, suppliers, etc.), and uses their
experience of the subject to improve, rationalise, change, or eliminate the
activity. The participative element feeds to and from the other three Ps, which
are constantly interacting, and is analogous to communities of interest.
Procedural
This is typically the organisation's Policies and
Procedures and Standard Operating Practices that would traditionally be
documented and made available to all relevant staff. Simply making these
accessible electronically to all staff, and structuring and linking them using
simple Internet technology provides an invaluable knowledge base that can be
continually improved and enhanced when linked to the participative
process.
Practical
This is the practical experience of knowing that,
when a certain set of actions are undertaken, or resources deployed, a given
result is the most likely outcome. It is not necessary for the process to be
understood for it to be included in the knowledge base. Linked to the
participative element, it can be developed and subsequently understood to become
part of the procedural or predictive knowledge types.
Predictive
This involves
using the organisation's information and analysis experience to predict that
certain events or actions are likely to occur, and subsequently informing the
person(s) occupying the appropriate role(s), for them to take action. This can
be developed and enhanced from any of the participative, practical, or
procedural types
SPIKE (Surrey Police Information and Knowledge
Environment)
SPIKE was created to address the immediate business requirements, as
outlined earlier, and to ensure future organisational flexibility. The name is
not just a useful acronym, it actually incorporates the fundamentals of what is
being provided. The focus is on information and knowledge, each being a separate
entity to be addressed in the most appropriate manner. It is an environment, not
a system or a piece of technology. Rather, it is a holistic enterprise-wide
environment that is the means by which all staff access and use the
organisation's information and knowledge.
In simple terms SPIKE has the
objective of providing the right information for the right person in the right
place, at the right time. In practical terms it comprises the following
components:
In technology terms SPIKE has been created using standard COTS
(Commercial Off The Shelf) hardware and software, based upon the Microsoft
product sets of NT, Office and BackOffice, configured to rigorous standards, and
incorporating small items of specialist software to provide additional
functionality.
From the user perspective SPIKE appears as an intranet presented through
a browser interface. The front page of SPIKE provides a standard template for
all information presentation, designed to make navigation simple and consistent.
What is actually presented to each user will depend upon who they are and where
they are. As these two items of information are known by the system whenever a
user logs on to SPIKE, it is possible to tailor and personalise the functions
they undertake, and the information they access.
Primary sources of information
presented through SPIKE are:
- Operational, which will be covered in more detail later
- Support, which provides the simple tasks that all staff undertake
themselves, e.g. expenses
- News, which provides access to all internal and external news sources,
e.g. press releases, in house magazines
- Divisions and Departments, reflecting the organisational structure with
each business unit publishing and maintaining its own information
- Publications, which is an electronic library of the organisation's
documents
- The Telephone Directory, which provides dynamic searching on a wide range of information sets besides simply telephone numbers. Each member of staff is responsible for maintaining their own set of information.
Each business unit is responsible for producing and maintaining its own
set of information on the Intranet, using the standard templates for
presentation and tool sets for publishing, which are provided as part of SPIKE.
Overall control and maintenance of information on the intranet is exercised by a
small central team that ensures the quality of presentation of the information
and its currency.
Operational page
One of the fundamental objectives of
SPIKE was to deliver to front-line operational officers the ability to access
relevant information in real time, which has been achieved through the creation
of an operational page. This page, only available through the security system to
operational officers, provides a number of tasks that they can undertake as part
of their everyday activities. Typically this would be:
- Accessing incident information in response to a 999 call
- Checking on name and address details via the voters register of an
individual stopped when on patrol
- Checking firearms registration details for an address or individual prior
to visiting premises
- Checking on the duties rota for their own duties in the future, or the
availability of staff on duty with particular skills
- Accessing the Police National Legal Database for validating a potential
charge, or seeking case law examples
- Accessing briefing sheets at the start of each duty to inform themselves
about individuals or vehicles under investigation, or about whom information
is required, and about incidents and crimes that have occurred since they were
last on duty
- Accessing the Problem Solving Policing database to update the tasks they have been allocated as part of a problem solving initiative, and checking on new tasks they have been allocated.
The incident, voters, firearms, and duties tasks all directly access the
live operational systems to provide the information, while the briefing sheets
are continuously maintained by intelligence officers across the organisation.
Impact of
SPIKE
It is
undeniable that SPIKE has achieved its original objective. It has seen
significant changes in the way that our staff approach their work. It has also
exceeded expectations in empowering staff through easy access to information,
and the ability for them to develop new ways of working based upon their own
practical experience, and using the features and facilities provided by SPIKE.
It has, as expected, acted as a catalyst for organisational change. For example,
it has presenting new challenges to the HR function. There is now a need to move
towards a competency based approach to job roles, and to middle management who
now find that their traditional ways of working are being challenged. This
challenge comes both from customers of the service, and staff providing the
service, who can now see many alternative ways of undertaking the work.
We already have two
knowledge applications developed by users. The first is a Problem Solving
Policing database (the practical knowledge type) which was produced and piloted
over a period of six months, and is now deployed enterprise wide as an essential
part of the policing system. The second is an analytical system (the predictive
knowledge type) for identifying the probability of a known individual
perpetrating a crime. This application is already being used in its initial form
and is currently being produced as a set of components to be integrated into a
number of investigatory activities.
The future
The potential for SPIKE in the future
is enormous. The only limiting factor will be the organisation's imagination and
vision of the way in which it can be used. There is much work to be done in
developing the skills and experience of our staff in a planned and co-ordinated
way; in changing the organisational structures and culture so that all staff are
comfortable with the empowerment that knowledge and information management
brings. We must also integrate more closely with our partners, suppliers and the
community, in order to capitalise fully on the capabilities that
'virtualisation' brings with it.
In practical terms, SPIKE will see
many enhancements over the next 12 months. Multimedia capabilities will provide
access to operational radio channels through the browser, to voice mail
integrated into messaging, to telephony, and to video conferencing. SPIKE will
move out of the office (in the form of ROVER -Remote Office and VEhicle
Environment) into vehicles, staff homes, partners offices, residents' homes, and
to the street, as the second stage of virtualisation to deliver information to
the place where our staff are most effective.
The last three years have been an
exciting and exhilarating time in putting down the foundations for the future,
and have in the process provided significant benefits to the organisation.
Having done this, the speed at which new developments can be produced and
deployed promises further excitement and benefits with a clear path forward for
the future.
Phil Scutchings is Director of Information Services at Surrey Police.
He can be contacted at:8435@surrey.police.uk
