Quarterly Summary - March 2012

Key Achievements

In this quarter progress has been made in:

• Developing a Quality Assurance Improvement Framework to monitor active adult sexual assault investigations. (R9)
• Finalising the Lakes District Health Board's contract for Sexual Abuse Assessment and Treatment Services. (R19)
• Integrating IAPro (the complaints database) with other databases that will provide information to inform the Early Warning System. The project is on track for completion in December 2012. (R47)
• Launching a targeted recruitment campaign aimed at attracting more women, Indian and Pacific applicants. (R50)
• Improving the overall health of the organisation. (R51)
• Establishing with SSC, targets, baselines and milestones against which cultural change can be measured in the following key areas:
  • Leadership and Change;
  • HR Strategy and Capability to Support Integrated Change;
  • Performance Management; and
  • Lifting Trust and Confidence in Complaint Investigations. (R37 & 59)

Police commitment to improve service delivery

The New Zealand Police's commitment to improve service delivery is evidenced by the following independent reports.

Transparency International – 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index

Transparency International is an organisation that measures corruption and integrity in the public and private sectors at international and national levels.¹

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, (first launched in 1995), draws on corruption related data from independent surveys and assessments and ranks the counties and territories assessed, according to the perceived levels of public sector corruption.²

On 1 December 2011, Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index. The index shows that New Zealand is perceived as the least corrupt country out of 183 countries and territories assessed internationally.

The ranking is not only testament to the integrity and performance of New Zealand's public sector, of which Police have a core role, but is also reflective of the trust and confidence that the public have in Police to uphold the rule of law.

Public Confidence in Police – UMR Research: Annual Review – Mood of the Nation

UMR is a research and evaluation company that has been conducting annual assessments of the level of confidence New Zealanders have in a range of organisations and government departments since 2001. In January 2012, UMR released its latest annual mood of the nation review.³ With respect to Police, the research found:

• Confidence in Police
  For the first time in a decade Police took over from GPs as the institution that New Zealander's have the greatest confidence in. 72% of respondents reported a greater level of confidence in Police, up 5% on the 2010 survey.
• Police performance
  78% of respondents rated Police's performance positively, positioning Police in second place behind the Fire Service.

Police commitment to improve the workplace

The New Zealand Police's commitment to improve the workplace is demonstrated in the following independent report.

NZ Police 2012 Workplace Survey – Preliminary Results

NZ Police in conjunction with Kenexa/JRA⁴, use annual workplace surveys to provide an insight into the health of the organisation via the perceptions of its employees.

The 2012 Workplace Survey was conducted between 27 February and 16 March 2012. Preliminary results show definite improvement over the 2011 results in the:

• Performance Index, (the average score across all questions in the survey). The Police Performance Index is now on par with the State Sector benchmark⁵ and is the clear leader in the Justice Sector.⁶
• Engagement profile (the proportion of staff who, (amongst other things), can be classified as 'engaged' in their work environment).
• overall survey scores generally.

Footnotes

1. See Transparency International's website.
2. Corruption is defined by Transparency International as the 'abuse of entrusted power for private gain'. The data sources used to compile the index focus on: bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement of public funds and on the strength and effectiveness of anti-corruption policy in the public sector.
3. See UNR Annual Review Mood of the Nation, Issue No 9, January 2012 at umr.co.nz.
4. Kenexa/JRA (formally JRA) is contracted by Police to undertake annual organisational surveys.
5. The State Sector benchmark group, selected for comparison purposes, consists of 18 New Zealand State Sector organisations who have conducted a workplace survey with JRA (NZ) Ltd within the last 12 months.
6. The Justice sector consists of the New Zealand Police, Ministry of Justice and the Department of Corrections.