3 Tips for Measuring Public Safety Performance

In every industry, organizations have to find effective, accurate ways to measure their performance.

For certain industries, this can be fairly straightforward. Take retail, for instance. Retailers can measure daily, weekly, and monthly sales figures to get an accurate idea of how they’re performing compared to last month or last year.

Customer Service centers can measure things like First Call Resolution and Call Abandonment rates to gauge their customers’ level of satisfaction.

But in the public safety sector, measuring performance is often much more nuanced. Sure, there are certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be easily tracked, but how do you measure citizen satisfaction, or citizens’ feeling of safety? These questions are much more challenging to answer.

Here are a few tips for effectively measuring your own public safety organization’s performance.

1. Collect and analyze data whenever possible.

With today’s technology, public safety agencies are able to collect truly massive amounts of data through typical and non-traditional channels. Citizens are reporting crimes, quality of life issues, and public safety problems via social media, while the internet has made gathering data through surveys and other formal requests easier than ever.

While this has given public safety organizations plenty of information to work with, it means nothing if you cannot figure out how to use it. This leads us to tip #2.

2. Identify your KPIs.

Each public safety agency, from fire to police to Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) has specific performance measures, or KPIs, that it keeps track of. But how do you know if you’re keeping track of the right ones—the ones that will optimally inform your organization’s policies? Spider Strategies offers a great public safety KPI library to get you started.

Another way to do this is to compare your KPIs to those of other similar agencies. A police department, for example, could compare its KPIs to those tracked by another police different that serves a comparable population, as well as a third police department located in a nearby town.

Not only can this offer police department managers a bigger-picture view of their industry as a whole, but it can also facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas and strategies that benefit all parties involved.

3. Invest in KPI management technology.

Without some kind of KPI management software, it can be nearly impossible to gain even a fraction of the usable intelligence that’s available. The right technology makes collecting, sorting through, and making sense of your public safety data much, much easier.

Take Spider Impact, for example. Spider Impact is strategic KPI management software that helps public safety organizations achieve their KPIs, share data for better community engagement and transparency, and identify and visualize trends and insights, as well as areas that need improvement.

Wondering how other public safety organizations use Spider Impact? See how the Carson City, NV, Sheriff’s Office uses Spider Impact to manage its KPIs and make its most important, data-driven decisions.

See What Spider Impact Can Do for Your Public Safety Organization's KPI Performance.

Let us show you how Spider Impact can revolutionize your public safety organization's KPI management/measurement and performance reporting. Request a free test drive or demo.