Post by Martin Hill-Wilson on 15 May 2008
Police & Citizen Focus
I’ve just returned from presenting to the first annual conference of chief police officers on the topic of next generation communications as seen in social networking and its likely impact on how police forces engage with the citizen community.
Citizen Focus is now big news for each of the 43 forces, so this new wave of social behaviour is both worrisome in its sheer difference but also offers models of social involvement that all forms of public service provision will need to leverage if confidence and trust in its delivery is to keep pace with the high expectations we collectively hold as their customers.
Designing and delivering services with the priorities of the citizen in mind is a mandated government priority that has emanated from numerous recent publications authored by the likes of Sir David Varney and Sir Ronnie Flannigan. The eventual outcome of all this, as and when it works, will be a remarkable transformation in the relationship between the police and those that they serve.
The core of the sought after transformation is contained in phrases which are now emerging such as Trust & Confidence, Customised Service, Managing Perceptions, Collaboration and Empowerment. A far cry from the image of policing that has saturated our TV and cinema screens for many decades.
The police and others in the public sector are clearly at the very outset of this journey and might well consider themselves at least a few decades behind the debate and experimentation that has been taking place in the private sector. However I’m not so sure that they are in fact that far behind or that future examples of great customer service will remain the preserve of those well known brands who make up the tiniest minority of those that ‘get it’, and are indeed getting on with it.
Already I’ve seen strategy and plans from police forces that provide a quality of direction and leadership on their Citizen Focus drive that puts private sector efforts to shame. First and foremost because these plans from senior management actually exist and are widely shared and understood within their organisations, but also because they are the product of a disciplined approach to forming clear aims, objectives, measures and action plans that seems to have completely gone out of fashion in the majority of cases in the private sector.
If best practice is your thing, then I suggest you pencil in a visit to your local police force sometime in 2010 by which time they will be well and truly up and running.
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