1. Dictation backlog Waterloo Regional Police Service Green Belt Project
May 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Measure
24-HOUR STANDARD NOT MET

8. Analyze

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

10. 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

11. Improve
Benchmark
Build new process for reports

12. 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

13. 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

14. Pilot Results

15. 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

16. 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

17. Control

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