New Zealand Police is embarking on a programme of work to transform our service to the public.
We aspire to be the world’s safest country and we have a goal of achieving 90 percent trust, confidence and citizen satisfaction by 2021. Our current level of trust and confidence sits at 78 percent, high by some standards, but we have work to do to get to 90 percent.
We know one of the biggest drivers of trust and confidence is when people get good quality service from us. While we are skilled at policing and responding to emergency situations, we are too often left wanting in regards to the level of service we aspire to in non-emergency situations. We know when people try to contact us for support or advice – at local stations, by telephone or online – they suffer an outdated and frustrating experience.
All New Zealanders deserve to be served by a modern 21st century police service. A Police that is first class; that can engage and interact with the public in whatever way that best suits them, whether it’s an emergency or not. If we want our communities to trust us, we must put the public at the heart of our service, and make it easier for people to engage with us for help, advice, and support. Our commitment to service must be central to everything we do.
We want to be much better at this part of our job. So this year we’re setting ourselves up to transform the way we provide our service to the public.
We’re using more technology to create faster, anytime, anywhere policing services.
We’re creating more options for the public to get in touch with us, such as online reporting, one non-emergency number for the whole country and diversifying and growing our public presence in communities, including increasing the number of mobile police bases.
We’re streamlining processes behind the scenes to ensure the public receive the service they expect – the service they deserve.
We also know that it’s our people that are critical in making every contact count so we’ll increase our overall resources in this area, provide consistent training and change the way we work.
Once we’re done, no matter where they are, who they are, or how they contact us, the public will receive the same excellent standard of service.
New Zealand Police is already world-leading in its use of technology. Over the past five years we have introduced new ways of working, and new mobile technology and communication systems for our frontline staff. We wanted our officers to spend less time filling out paperwork and more time working with people. This internal transformation freed up the equivalent of 354 frontline officers in time savings.
We know we can be successful in transforming our business in this way, and we’ve seen the benefits. We are now going to apply the same focus and energy to transforming our service delivery.
I want to be clear that this is all about increasing the choices available to the public about how, where and when they contact us. We know that across the country people still want to engage face-to-face with local police in their community, so making sure that we are even more visible around the country will also be a vital part of the way we deliver a better policing service to everyone. As part of that over the next four years, as announced in 2017, an extra 880 new police officers will be coming to work in communities across New Zealand.
However, we know that people also want us to be accessible through other channels and we have not kept up with public expectations in our provision of digital services. We have set an aspiration to be world-class in terms of digital access. Beginning later this month we’re seeking your feedback through workshops, and an online survey to gather information about how you want to interact and engage with us. We need help from the public so we can understand how they want digital access to work. We’ll use this information, to ensure our systems are customer-focused and intuitive.
We’re interested in what you, the public, think. Send us your ideas or feedback on how we can make it easier for people to get help, advice and support from NZ Police to haveyoursay@police.govt.nz.
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