EFM Software - Case: The Amsterdam Police Force

The Amsterdam police force: performance management by the police
As initiator of implementing the balanced scorecard in two divisions of the Amsterdam Police Department, John Duijker has considerable experience in defining performance indicators for police forces. John Duijker is business controller of the district Amsterdam-Oost en represents the Amsterdam police force in the National Police Controllers meetings.

The organization
Duijker starts by giving some facts on the Amsterdam police force:

The Amsterdam(-Amstelland) police force comprises the municipalities of Aalsmeer, Amsterdam, Amstelveen, Diemen, Uithoorn and Ouder-Amstel. This region covers 357 km2 and has a population of 900,000. The force consists of 5800 officers and has an annual budget of some 394 million euros

Why a balanced scorecard?
According to (former) Commissioner Kuiper, the police force is a results-driven business aimed at realizing a greater sense of security and quality of life of citizens. Politics and society increasingly demand the police to account for results in these fields. That is why (performance) management information is essential to the police.

The balanced scorecard is a good instrument to provide this information because of a number of reasons. First, Duijker points to the structured way the balanced scorecard approaches management information. Information is not presented fragmented, but all relevant information is ordered by category. Moreover, information is integral but at the same time differentiated because priorities qualify the information presented. Finally, using the balanced scorecard leads to a uniform, cyclic format.

Another benefit of the balanced scorecard is the possibility of adding subjective objectives. Besides, there are a number of advantages specific for the organization of the Amsterdam Police Force. The balanced scorecard breaks out of the persistent culture to judge results of police work only on developments in criminality. Matters like crime prevention, management, pro-activity and working conditions also have their place on the balanced scorecard.

Connected to this, Duijker also points to the wrong way of addressing issues of responsibility based on the confusion about the difference between the notions of output and outcome. Output is dependent on the input of people and means. Outcome is also a result on external factors which an organization can not influence. As an example Duijker talks about the number of purse snatchings which is also dependent on the weather (how hotter it is, the more snatchings take place). One can also think of social-economical factors which influence criminality. The balanced scorecard, however, does not only pay attention to end results, but rather emphasizes information indicating the way an organization is playing into the factors that determine results. Therefore, management is better and more timely than it is the case when merely "outcome"-measures are reported.

Implementation
The Amsterdam police force started with two pilots on decentral district level. These pilots took place separately: one pilot was top-down, the other bottom-up. After the pilots were finished, introduction of the balanced scorecard was executed per department, so the instrument would spread steadily. These departemental scorecards were based on the strategic assumptions of the individual sections. This way, every scorecard has its own set of factors and indicators. By advancing discussions about the different sets of Key Performance Indicators, new universally applied indicators were developed.

Fields of application
At this moment, the scorecards are used as a benchmarking tool for the differences in performance of the different units within the Amsterdam police force. The scorecards also give insight into a number of specific work processes for which the police force is responsible. Duijker mentions youth criminality, organized crime, traffic safety, environment and centralization of emergency services.

As an example, Duijker used Bizzscore to demonstrate one of the scorecards of the Amserdam police force. It is a top-level scorecard comprised of five perspectives; the Customer perspective has been divided into is a perspective for internal customers and a perspective for society, the external customer.

Duijker shows the variety in KPI’s, like "Housebreaking", "Accessibility", "Solved cases", "Absenteeism because of illness", "Absenteeism at shooting practices", "% Allochtonous officers" and "Number of complaints". Next, Duijker gave an example of a drill-down by starting in the top scorecard, then, by clicking on a specific KPI, zooming in on district level and finally drilling down to individual team scores. Duijker called the user friendliness of Bizzscore perhaps the best feature of the software, “by this I mean both the easy way the software can be used, and the clear way results are presented so they can be interpreted easily”.

Results
Applying the balanced scorecard has led to a better awareness of the management of the Amsterdam Police Force of the individual contributions to overall performance, of the ways in which factors can be influenced and of which interdependencies exist between key success factors and key performance indicators. Besides, it has become clear that actions are now more focussed on those things that really matter. Duijker concludes by telling that the management has the advantage of a uniform management information approach, especially benchmarking and greater transparency have proven to be of immense value.