'Very real sense of urgency' to make Comms changes

Initiating the implementation of recommendations from the Independent Review of Police Communications Centres is top priority for Interim Communications Centres National Manager, Superintendent Mike Wilson.


Mike will help implement recommendations from the Independent Review of Police Communications Centres (IRP) until a new national manager is appointed.

After that he will return to his role as National Policing Development Manager. However, Mike and his team in Policing Development Group will continue to support work in communications centres and districts and undertake initiatives at the direction of the new National Communications Centres Advisory Board (see below).

"Since the IRP was released I have travelled with the Board of Commissioners to each of the three communication centres and I have been heartened by the goodwill and support offered for any changes that need to be made from both the comms team and staff in areas and other service centres," says Mike.

"Key groups of practitioners from comms and areas have also met in the past few weeks and there is a very real sense of urgency in getting the changes made as soon as possible.

"However, it is important to make sure we take the time to 'get things right'."

Mike says the IRP highlighted areas of improvement for both communications centres and in districts, especially around call intake strategies (call priorities and classifications, non-emergency call systems, telephone reporting systems) and managing call response (call stacking and delayed response, transferring and referring calls and managing call response from the field).

"It also flagged the need for improvements in processes, systems, training, HR and management and we have already commenced work to address some of these issues.

"Over the past two weeks we have been prioritising and assessing 'what needs to be done and when' from IT, finance, HR, training, comms and district perspectives. We have given an undertaking to involve as many people as possible in the development and implementation of any changes," says Mike.

"It's an opportunity to help ensure staff in the communications centres and districts are able to interact effectively to provide the best possible responses to calls for service, particularly emergency calls.

"A central challenge for us is to find a way of balancing the need for time for proactive policing while still doing better at responding to calls for service," he says.

Mike says the work with communications centres is a natural extension of the work the organisation has been doing with crime and crash reduction over the last two years.

More information is available on the Communications Centres External Review pages on the Police website www.police.govt.nz.