Dictation backlog Waterloo Regional Police Service Green Belt Project May 2015 - April 2017 Introduction to why project selected and training program- here today to share with you WRPS journey with six sigma and continuous improvements with respect to one project we intiated in response to a huge problem we had for years. This was a green belt level project with a small project team that looked at the backlog we had in our Records dept with processing dictated reports from officers.This problem was identified by our senior leadership as a priortity when selecting process for six sigma projects

Background – Define  Records Branch transcribes and links officer reports that are dictated into a queue Job Classification in Queue Priority 1 – Show Cause Priority 2 – Charges, Crown Briefs Priority 3 – Serious occurrences Priority 4 – All other occurrences Dictation system since 1998, based on a queue system that uses prioritization. Officer dictates report into a queue, sits until an information processing specifalist picks it up and listens and while doing that types the report and links all involved person, businesses etc into NICHE our Records Management System. This is a very manual process. Pre process improvement this process was the same for all priorities and officers only had query access to our RMS and no data entry access. Above shows the classification by priority of jobs that are dictated – you can see that each priority is tied to a specific report type and this priority dictates the turnaround tme in the queue and how jobs come ot the next available

Problem Statement Backlog of over 30,000 + low priority 3 and 4 reports Average turnaround of 5.5 months to get into NICHE Over 2,000 hours of dictation time (Level of effort = 7,000 hours !) We had a huge problem. We had a huge backlog of low priority reports sitting in a queue with an avg turnaround of 5.5 months These are low priority reports with no criminal offense taking place (bylaw, verbal disputes, etc) but were still required to be processed. The number of jobs in the backlog was equivalent to over 7,000 hours worth of level of effort. Since priority 1 and 2 jobs had to be processed within a set turnaround due to the seriousness and for court purprses this meant that lower priority reports continued to pile up and “Wait” to be processed. This waiting created other workarounds, including having officers bump their dictated jobs to a higher priority even it was not,just to have it processed faster, which meant our priority system and data wasn’t 100% reflections of how the priority queue works

Goal To achieve a 24 hour turn around time (from when a report is received) on all dictations Maintain data quality As per our senior leadership, they wanted the goal of this project to be a 24 hour turnaround time (for Records) on all dictated reports. Reports contain important information that if not linked in the databased is not searchable to anyone. Having lower priority jobs sits means previous calls and persons on those calls that were dealt with is not searchable in the database. This is a huge issue for officers and as a result workaorunds were created (such as typing information into the dispatch call on our Computer Aided Dispatch system as a workaround not knowing when the acutal report would be added and linked so that some information could be searched and read). Keeping data quality was also important for this goal – we didn’t want shortcuts or further workarounds that compromised what what entered in the RMS

Cost of Poor Quality Internal use: investigations, intelligence, background checks, officer safety Negative work environment Increased overtime External use: UCR/Statistics Canada, Access to Information requests, Crown

Measure Phase Sample for Analysis All 2014 dictations/transcriptions A total of 73,747 dictated jobs 6,904 hours of dictation A total of 68,633 jobs transcribed 24,438 hours transcribed

Measure 24-HOUR STANDARD NOT MET

Analyze

Analyze - Root Causes Why does the Backlog Exist? Officer-generated inefficiencies VARIATION prompts not always followed. No uniform standard for priority 3 & 4 RTFs.

Analyze Staffing Capacity Model Overall Low Priority Jobs High Priority Jobs Baseline 2014 Number of Jobs Transcribed   Total hours to produce Average Minutes per Job Average Mins per Job 68,633 24,438 21 17 24 Projection Hours of Work Available per Shift - Less Personal Fatigue Hour Less Other duties = Actual Hours per Shift 9 1 7 Total # of FTE in Dictation x Hours Available to work per shift # shifts worked per year Total Hours Available 13 220 20,020 Backlog Number of Jobs in Queue Hours required to meet demand Hours per FTE in a year # of FTE needed 25,000 7,083 1,540 4.6 Divide the work – backog work quarantined and worked on by special project team, w hile other staff

Improve Benchmark Build new process for reports

Pilot 1 platoon piloted direct entry of the low priority report into NICHE Template created for guidelines Records and Platoon trained Milestone measurements taken Exception reports created

Pilot Program - Officer Entry of Reports Mileposts General Reports REPORT TEMPLATE CREATED Entered Time REPORT TEMPLATE COMPLETED Last Modified Time TASK GENERATED Incomplete Occurrence Task Created DATA ENTRY START Incomplete Occurrence Task Started DATA ENTRY COMPLETE Incomplete Occurrence Task Completed APPROVAL Initial Report Task Approved Report Writing Time Workflow Delay* Wait Time Data Entry Time Supervisor Approval Time Total Report Processing Time

Pilot Results

Feedback and Evaluation “I’ve gotten so much done today because of this thanks again!” Cst. Forrester #1307 92% were moderately/extremely satisfied with their experience The top three things that were liked most: Having a report on the system right away Ability to write and edit report Ability to write and submit from the car 64% said their use of MI (Miscellaneous) CAD comments decreased slightly/significantly 100% said training sessions were extremely/very convenient

Implementation and Roll out Procedure updated Established exception reporting Total training of 683 officers (front line and speciality areas) Done on site Dashboard created Task

Control

Control Exception reporting monitored by Supervisors Since Feb 2016 maintained a 24 hour turnaround Backlog eliminated and has not returned Decrease in overtime (50%)