Appendix One - Terms of Reference

The Commissioner’s Terms of Reference for the review were to:

a. Examine New Zealand Police Communication Centre practice and compare with stated service delivery aims and objectives.

b. Review and provide recommendations on:

358. The Review Panel identifies throughout this report that there are issues with the CCSC that need to be addressed and makes recommendations to deal with them. The recommendations made are not exhaustive and deliberately not overly prescriptive but offer guidance for the future direction of New Zealand Police communications.

352. New Zealand Police will need to consider what short, medium and long term actions are required and consolidate the recommendations in this report with work already underway relating to the Communications Centres.

353. An implementation plan should be devised to outline what needs to be done now (within six months), including the priority items to develop better service and enable a sustainable operation pending the implementation of mid to long term actions which will be more strategic in nature.

337. The CCSC has a variety of stakeholder groups it interacts with. These include Police Districts, other government departments, community groups and the public. The strength of the relationships with these stakeholders varies considerably.

338. Relationships with Police Districts at the senior level are generally good. However, relationships with front-line police are not as good although this varies across the country.

Operational Planning

305. There appears to be limited involvement of the CCSC in District planning and the execution of operations. In examples provided it appears that District staff and management tend to advise rather than consult Centres on operational orders and in some cases, provide no advice at all of planned operations that Centre management and staff should be made aware of as they are likely to be impacted on. More importantly, no knowledge of or involvement in contributing to planning denies the opportunity for setting a support plan for Comms in place.

246. There are a large number of issues with the CCSC processes and systems that the Panel has identified. The processes and systems relate to how calls are received by the CCSC, decisions made about appropriate actions, and then dispatch of police units in response.

Initial Handling of Calls by Telecom New Zealand Ltd

247. Telecom has requirements under the Telecommunication Service Obligation (TSO) Deed to:

157. This section reviews the many issues pertaining to staffing and people management within the CCSC.

158. People and systems provide the core capability of the CCSC. The systems that the CCSC employs are world class, but the people capability is under-developed.?

159. The Review Panel has been impressed by the dedication of the CCSC management and staff to the work they do, and their desire to improve the performance.