|
CITY OF VANCOUVER ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT |
Report Date: |
February 14, 2005 | |
Author: |
Iris Romanuik | |
Phone No.: |
604.717.2716 | |
RTS No.: |
4921 | |
CC File No.: |
1376 | |
Meeting Date: |
March 3, 2005 |
TO: |
Standing Committee on City Services and Budgets |
FROM: |
Chief Constable of the Vancouver Police Department and the City Manager |
SUBJECT: |
Staffing Review of the Information Management Section of the Vancouver Police Department |
RECOMMENDATION
A. THAT Council receive for INFORMATION the report on the establishment of 26 additional positions in the Information Management Section of the Vancouver Police Department at an estimated annual cost of $633,000 (prorated for fiscal 2005 at $599,000), including fringe benefits, subject to review and classification by Human Resources, plus one-time staffing costs estimated at $50,000 for computers, furniture, equipment and supplies and that approval and funding be deferred to the 2005 Interim Operating Budget.
AND FURTHER THAT
The regular fulltime positions are established as follows:
2 Management Positions (exempt - pay band 9) $170,200 without offset
6 CPIC Operators / Clerk Reviewer (pay grade 17) $276,700 funded by the transfer of the equivalent amount for 6 full-time positions from the existing VPD Casual Staffing budget
3 Record Clearance Clerks (2 at pay grade 13, I at pay grade 17) $124,600 funded from increased record clearance revenue
4 Crown Liaison - (pay grade 17) $184,500 without offset
2 CPIC Validation Clerks - (pay grade 17) $92,200 without offset
2 Data Entry Clerks - Traffic Tickets - (pay grade 13) $78,400 without offset
7 Public Service Counter Staff - (6 at pay grade 15 and 1 at pay grade 17) $329,100 funded in part ($221,400) from increased record clearance revenue and the remainder ($107,700) from the operating budget without offset
CHIEF CONSTABLE'S COMMENTS
The review of the Information Management Section was conducted to evaluate the resource level of the Section based on the current customer requirements and how the Section services those requirements. The need for additional resources was identified, primarily as a result of the changes imposed on this Section by Federal and Provincial policing partners.
While the review identified that the Department led the industry with some best practices it also identified opportunities for process re-engineering and, in some areas, increased specialization. Those opportunities that could be managed with the current resources have been implemented.
A high value is placed on the quality of the information held by the Vancouver Police Department; the Information Management Section is the unit responsible for ensuring that data is accurate, searchable and current. Sufficient resources are required to ensure this occurs.
CITY MANAGER'S COMMENTS
The joint review by Corporate Services and the VPD of the staffing levels of the Information Management Section of the Vancouver Police Department, as instructed by Council, indicated that changes in the operating environment for this section have resulted in the need for additional resources. Some of these changes are required as a result of changing processes imposed by external agencies, such as Provincial Crown Counsel, the RCMP and the Canadian Police Information Centre.
The review also suggested several process improvements, which have reduced the amount of additional resources that will be required. Many of these recommended process improvements have been or will soon be implemented. In addition, alternative funding sources have been utilized where possible to reduce the budget impact of the recommendation.
Information is vital to the successful operation of any policing enterprise and an appropriate level of resources must be dedicated to the creation, entry and maintenance of that information.
When review projects of this nature are undertaken and recommendations implemented, it is necessary to review and validate the results. Therefore, the City Manager recommends:
B. THAT Council request the Chief Constable and City Manager to review the report after one year and inform Council if the service improvement projections were met.
The City Manager recommends approval of Recommendations A and B.
COUNCIL POLICY
All changes in levels of service are to be reported to Council.
SUMMARY
A review has been conducted of the staffing requirements of the Information Management Section of the Vancouver Police Department. This review resulted in recommendations related to various process improvements and the need for additional resources. The observations and recommendations are detailed in the following report.
PURPOSE
The purpose of this report is to report back to Council on the results of an independent study of staffing levels in the Information Management Section of the Police Department. The study was conducted using internal resources made available from the Business Support department of the Corporate Services Group.
BACKGROUND
This review of staffing levels in the Information Management Section of the VPD was comprised of an in-depth process review of all the units in the section. The flow of transactions was analyzed and the necessity and value of providing the information gathered and reported in the data bases used was estimated. In addition, the processes were benchmarked against other Police agencies to determine opportunities for process improvements. The review was conducted by the Business Support department in the City's Corporate Services Group.
Several acronyms are used throughout this report and are described and explained below.
PRIME - Police Records Information Management Environment - PRIME is the system which has been legislated as the single Records Management Database for the province.
CPIC - Canadian Police Information Centre - CPIC is the national database housing information on missing, charged, convicted and wanted persons. CPIC also contains information on persons who are under surveillance, are of special interest to police or have conditions placed on them by the courts. The database also houses information on lost, stolen and recovered property and vehicles.
CCJS - Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics - the Federal body that provides crime statistics, regionally and nationally for Statistics Canada
Justin - Justice Department Interface - "Justin" is the Criminal Justice case management system and, as part of the Provincial PRIME initiative, a one way interface was developed to allow the electronic transfer of Reports for Crown Counsel from PRIME to Justin.
The Vancouver Police Department Information Management Section provides services to numerous user groups both within and external to the City. These user groups include:
· Sworn Officers - report transcription, quality assurance of data, switchboard and mail distribution services.
· Criminal Justice Services - reports to Crown Counsel related to arrests and criminal charges
· Outside Agencies - data handling related to CPIC, criminal records handling for federal agencies and data provided to the Risk and Emergency Management and Permits and Licences groups of the City
· Statistical data for the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
· Information management for the PRIME system
· Criminal records checks for private citizens, volunteers and corporations (including the City of Vancouver)
· Public Services such as staffing the public service counters, providing information to law firms and insurance agencies and dealing with victims of crime.
These services are an important component of providing law enforcement to the City and providing these services utilizing a clerical pool of resources is a more cost effective way of managing the information needs of the VPD and its partners.
Increasingly the records management section has found that they cannot keep up with the increasing demands for current and accurate information placed on them by their many user groups. Volumes continue to grow and changing processes implemented by senior justice departments at both the federal and provincial levels have also contributed to increased workloads.
DISCUSSION
Following are the observations arising from the review of the processes in the VPD Information Management Section.
1. Insufficient Management Capacity
There is currently one exempt manager for 83 Teamsters Staff in the department. This span of control is excessive and does not provide the manager with the opportunity to consider strategic issues and process improvements in a timely manner.
Although there are team leads assigned to each work unit within Records Management, they are primarily functioning in a working or operational role. These individuals devote little time to performance planning and performance issues; special projects; staff development; Human Resource administration; liaison with external parties and other internal customers and other managerial duties. The absence of adequate managerial coverage results in burn out of existing staff and the ongoing inability to effectively manage processes and people working in the section.
2. Canadian Centre of Justice Statistics (CCJS)
The VPD is legally obligated to report criminal activities to the CCJS. Every report created must be read and evaluated for CCJS statistical coding requirements. This can be a time consuming and complicated process requiring the reviewer to read the officer's synopsis and understand the important elements of the offence. Staff will also review records for investigative content and if deficiencies are identified, advise the officer of appropriate follow up action. Improving the data quality of records will reduce the time required to be spent by Information Management staff. However, it is accepted that officers can not and should not be tasked with classifying records, when this work can be done more effectively by clerical staff trained specifically to deal with the complexities of the system. Incorrect coding decreases the efficiency of routing, preventing files from arriving in the correct unit. It also impacts the ability to analyze crimes and crime trends.
3. Data transcription and quality assurance over data
The number of incident reports requiring transcription has risen by approximately 24% since 1999 without any corresponding increases in staff. Failure to transcribe reports in a timely manner reduces the availability of potentially critical information to Sworn Officers.
All reports which are transcribed are then subjected to a quality assurance check in order to ensure the integrity of the data in the system. Timeliness of quality assurance reviews of the incident reports in the data base is critical to effective policing. Currently over 1,000 reports are awaiting the quality assurance checks necessary to validate integrity of data.
4. Master Index System requirements
A statutory requirement of PRIME is that each policing jurisdiction is responsible for maintaining the Master Name Index (MNI) to ensure that events involving the same individual are linked.
Limited resources are available to maintain the accuracy of the MNI and the VPD is currently unable to adhere to the legislated requirement. As a result agencies who use PRIME-including the City-do not have access to an accurate and complete data base, again impacting the effectiveness of Police operations and in some cases resulting in risk to officers and the public.
5. Criminal Record Clearances
The RCMP's decision to eliminate providing criminal record clearance checks in June 2004 at E Division Headquarters in Vancouver has significantly impacted the VPD's Clearance Unit's workload, and ultimately affecting the level of service the VPD is able to provide to the citizens of Vancouver. Applicants requiring a Criminal records check must attend at a police agency in the jurisdiction where they live and request this service. The VPD is required to provide this service in accordance with the Criminal Record Review Act.
Prior to the RCMP action the department averaged approximately 670 contacts a month. The average number of contacts has increased to 1,280 per month since the change.
Failure to have sufficient resources to process the applications can result in delays in responding to applicants thus impacting their ability to secure employment, obtain Visas, gain acceptance into educational facilities or prevent them from volunteering.
The VPD charges for these services and the fee recoveries will more than offset the additional costs of providing the services.
6. Justin Interface
Presently all Reports to Crown Counsel (RCC) are sent in hard copy form from VPD. "Justin" is the one way interface developed to allow the electronic transfer of RCC information from PRIME to Justin. The benefit of the interface will be to the Crown Council office that currently performs manual data entry of the RCC details.
Before the information can be transferred a number of additional checks and data linkages must be made on the electronic record. If multiple accused exist then more work is required before a transfer can be completed. Based on testing performed by VPD and Victoria Police the additional time to assemble and process a RCC using the electronic interface will be between 30 and 45 minutes. This additional workload is estimated to result in the need for 4 additional full time staff to process the 1,500 RCC's each month. The Department of Justice Crown, for the Federal charges, will not be participating in the interface project. The VPD will continue to produce hard copy reports for them as before.
The VPD is scheduled to implement this interface by March 14, 2005 in order to comply with this legislated requirement. If additional resources are not available other work will need to be left undone or VPD cannot comply with the requirement.
7. CPIC Data base
CPIC is the national database housing information on missing, charged, convicted and wanted persons. CPIC also contains information on persons who are under surveillance, are of special interest to police or have conditions placed on them by the courts. The database also houses information on lost, stolen and recovered property and vehicles. Adding, maintaining and removing entries on CPIC in a timely manner is critical to law enforcement agencies.
Since 1999, there has been a 30% increase in the number of criminal warrants issued; a 25% increase in probation orders and a 30% increase in towed vehicle queries. There has been no increase in staff to support the additional work.
The unit currently performing this work is reliant on the Provincial Court Services for the production of most of these documents. Due to the shortage of staff the documents seldom come to VPD in a timely way and it is not uncommon to have a three-month delay.
Many of the subjects have frequent contact with the police and failure to have the information entered into CPIC in a timely way can result in missed opportunities for executing warrants or breaching a subject who is on probation.
8. CPIC validations
In December 2004 CPIC operations advised Police agencies of the new CPIC validation policy. The new process requires double verification of records at the time of entry and further validation of data for each record within 3-6 months after initial entry. Thereafter records will need to be validated every twelve months for changes that occurred within the year.
The average number of records requiring validation in a month is 2,615. The number of records requiring double verification is 3,189. The data entry and maintenance of VPD information recorded in CPIC must follow strict standards provided by the RCMP. Periodic audits are performed by the RCMP audit unit to validate adherence to those standards.
Having inaccurate records on CPIC can prevent the execution of court orders, create the potential of false arrests and hinder the recovery of property.
9. Traffic Ticket Data Entry
The reallocation of positions and the reduction of staff in the Information Management Section related to the implementation of PRIME resulted in the elimination of traffic ticket data entry. In 2003, VPD officers issued approximately forty-four thousand tickets. Traffic tickets are frequently a method of gathering intelligence and linking criminals to vehicles and associates. The analysis of ticket entry assists officers in traffic initiatives and provides city engineering with statistical data to support city initiatives.
The department is losing valuable intelligence and analytical data by not entering this information into PRIME.
10. Current Unfunded Positions
Prior to implementation of PRIME, a KPMG study identified potential opportunities that existed for process reengineering. The recommendation suggested the reduction of 14 positions and related funding resulting from a shift in responsibility for record / information access, data capture, record completion and data quality from the Information Section to Police Officers. A shift of responsibilities to Police Officers has occurred but not to the extent envisioned.
Seven positions were eliminated. However, seven unfunded positions remain, that are necessary to sustain the department's current service levels.
11. Benchmarking
Benchmarking was performed against six other police agencies. The VPD was within the range of staffing levels based on adjusted workload measures. Given the differences in operations between police forces and the nature of the types of policing services required in each area, direct meaningful comparisons are somewhat difficult.
The review of processes in different police forces showed that there are opportunities to improve some business processes at the VPD. These opportunities have been or are in the process of being implemented, where current staffing and resource constraints allow. The review also showed processes in place at VPD which are considered to be best business practice.
Recommendations
The results of the staffing review indicated recommendations in two areas; process improvements and resource increases.
The process improvements relate to facilitating increased specialization for the management information staff.
The review recommended the creation of dedicated CPIC and Quality Assurance units to address the issues of increased volumes for CPIC data entry, increased validation requirements, timeliness of completion of quality assurance reviews and complexity of coding requirements for CCJS information. Further clerical support in the form of filing clerks and a Master Name Index clerk will allow increased specialization in the CPIC and Quality Assurance units. This specialization would be enabled by the conversion of six casual positions to regular full-time positions (as discussed below), to facilitate increased ownership of job functions and data.
The review recommended that the system administration function be performed by a dedicated expert, not as currently by a supervisor. This would also be supported through the conversion of casual to full-time positions.
Access to the Information Management area should be restricted. Allowing unnecessary access by sworn officers is disruptive to the working environment and reduces controls surrounding hard copy documents and files.
Report routing rules and approval processes should be formalized and documented to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of both the Information Management Section and sworn officer units.
The second area of recommendations involves an increase to the resources available to the Information Management Section.
The recommendations indicate the creation of 13 new positions as described below and the conversion of 6 casual positions to full-time positions. In addition, it is recommended that 7 positions that are currently not funded have the funding reinstated.
1. The review recommended that two additional union exempt management positions be created. These positions, reporting to a Director of Information Management should be responsible for managing the day-to-day staffing issues and leading key projects. They will each be responsible for the performance of 3 or 4 units within the Information Management Section. This would allow the Director position to focus on longer term strategic and management issues.
2. A second recommendation relates to the transfer of funding from the casual staffing budget to allow the creation of six regular full-time positions. This will facilitate the increased specialization related to quality assurance, transcription, CCJS verification, systems administration and maintenance of the Master Index system.
3. The additional workload related to records clearances requires three additional staff to provide timely and appropriate services to the public and other organizations, including the City itself. It is expected that these positions will enable the generation of additional revenues through the fees charged for record clearances.
4. It is recommended four new Crown Liaison staff be created, to address the legislated requirements related to electronic records transfer to the Provincial Justice Department.
5. It is further recommended that two CPIC validation staff be added to address the increased requirements for timely and complete CPIC record validation.
6. The intelligence and analytical value of traffic ticket data entry supports the recommendation for two staff in this area.
7. It is recommended that 7 positions that are currently not funded have the funding reinstated. These positions have supported the current levels of service, which has been shown to be in need of additional positions as discussed.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
The financial implications have been broken down to reflect the needed funding to implement the recommendations as presented in 2005 and the ongoing annual funding requirements in current dollars.
Positions |
Number |
Details |
2005 |
Ongoing Annual Costs |
Managers |
2 |
Pay band 9 including benefits |
$112,300 |
$170,200 |
CPIC Operators / Clerk Reviewer |
6 |
Pay grade 17 - Funded by the use of casual staffing funds |
$276,700 |
$276,700 |
Record Clearance Clerks |
3 |
2 pay grade 13 and 1 pay grade 17 including benefits |
$124,600 |
$124,600 |
Crown Liaison |
4 |
Pay grade 17 including benefits |
$121,700 |
$184,500 |
CPIC Validation Clerks |
2 |
Pay grade 17 including benefits |
$92,200 |
$92,200 |
Data Entry - Traffic Tickets |
2 |
Pay grade 13 including benefits |
$51,800 |
$78,400 |
Public Service Counter Staff |
7 |
6 at Pay grade 15 and 1 pay grade 17 -Reinstate funding |
$329,100 |
$329,100 |
Subtotal |
26 |
$1,108,400 |
$1,255,700 | |
Sources of Funding |
||||
Reduction in Casual staffing budget to support conversion |
6 |
$276,700 |
$276,700 | |
Increased Record Clearance revenue |
$232,700 |
$346,000 | ||
Net funding impact |
20 |
$599,000 |
$633,000 |
Additional one-time staffing costs for computers, furniture, equipment and supplies are estimated at $50,000.
Pay grades indicated are subject to review and classification by Human Resources.
CONCLUSION
The review concluded that process improvements are necessary to attain a higher level of specialization in the department. All process changes identified are either in progress or have been completed. It was also concluded that volume increases, benefits not achievable from the PRIME implementation and off loading from other police agencies and the Crown have resulted in the need for the Information Management Section to increase their resource compliment in order to meet the growing demands for information relative to law enforcement.
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