As every aspect of the world around us rapidly embraces the digital age, from voice assistants to the metaverse, citizens’ expectations of government digital services are growing at pace. In recent years the pandemic has shown us how fast we can adopt digital solutions and realise the benefits they bring. Through exemplars like the Government Digital Service (GDS), the UK has led the way, putting the citizen at the centre of this digital revolution in government. Now the UK is set to lead the way again, as the National Policing Digital Strategy 2020-2030 sets the ambition to deliver seamless citizen experience for policing, while enabling officers and staff through digital.
Sopra Steria are experts in user-centred digital transformation in government and the public sector. As the UK market leader in police command and control technology, we’ve been delivering mission critical capabilities in policing for over 25 years. We’ve now partnered with Salesforce, the global market leader in CRM, to build a truly seamless end-to-end citizen experience for policing.
Building on methods of GDS and the wider UK government, our approach is centred around five key groups. We look at how their needs can be addressed and how their experience can be improved through a joined-up approach. Gaining insight for each group through ongoing research and feedback enables both citizens and police to shape the design of the products and services that serve them, whilst increasing public trust and reducing failure demand.
#1 Citizen
Offering citizens choice to engage with forces through a channel that suits them.
STORM is already at the heart of 65% of police control rooms supporting millions of emails, 101 and 999 calls every year. Now, with Salesforce, we’ll work with forces to design citizen centred digital services and manage emerging contact channels like social media and webchat. This offers new opportunities for both citizens and the police. We’ll reduce demand by delivering the convenience and efficiency of digital self-service and create new options for citizens who may prefer to contact the police privately and at a time that suits them, rather than via traditional contact channels.
# 2 Contact Handler
Building trust by ensuring every citizen contact is joined up across every touchpoint.
Every citizen interaction will be informed by a complete view of their circumstances and their contact history, all visible to contact handlers in one place. Richer risk assessment will inform decision making and help protect citizens from harm, while inefficient search and re-keying of data is eliminated.
We can now reach beyond our pedigree in the control room to the whole organisation. Our truly seamless view of citizen experience can span from front counter officers to next generation interactions with digital contact handlers like chatbots. We’re future proofing the police, not just to deliver a joined-up control room for today, but a joined-up police service for tomorrow.
#3 Partnerships and interoperability
Enabling openness and collaboration through interoperability and ethical data sharing.
STORM has long established multi-agency capability, helping forces across the U.K. to work better together. Building on our track record of ‘joining the dots’ between police forces, we’ll support forces to embed a whole public system approach and ‘join the dots’ across government.
Using Salesforce's Mulesoft technology, we build re-usable integration platforms, allowing forces to drive efficiencies and improve customer experience for needs ranging from mental health services to help with fly tipping. By shaping services around the need of the individual, we ensure they get the right help, by the right partner at the right time. The result is diverting demand, eliminating duplicate contacts across organisations and improving the citizen experience.
# 4 Dispatcher
STORM has been at the heart of the control room, supporting police forces to address harm for over 25 years. Our market leading platform is one of the most feature rich and robust solutions for police command and control on the market, with end users directly steering its direction through our regular STORM user groups.
Our success story is built on developing products, with the police, for the police. In the coming years STORM will continue to evolve, building new integration capabilities across key control room systems, refining user experience through feedback from frontline police and looking towards a future in the cloud, at a pace that complements our policing customers’ needs.
#5 Officers & Staff outside the control room
Ensuring users outside the control room have the right information and capabilities, wherever they are. STORM is already extensively used outside the control room to provide the mission critical information officers and staff need to protect themselves, and the public.
This year, we are bringing STORM to virtually any device, on any operating system, allowing officers and staff outside the control room even greater flexibility. Officers and frontline supervisors will be empowered to complete common tasks wherever they are, freeing them from desks and laptops to increase their time as a visible presence in our communities.
Combined, our STORM products connect users in real time, reflecting the Peelian principle “the police are the people and the people are the police”. With every contact received, they will enhance police insight to identify root causes and prevent harm and will build UK police as leaders in citizen centric policing, powered by Sopra Steria and our partners.
About Sopra Steria
Sopra Steria, a European leader in consulting, digital services and software development, helps its clients drive their digital transformation. With 47,000 employees in 30 countries, the Group places people at the heart of everything it does to build a positive future.
A long history of providing major operational systems to the public safety market has placed Sopra Steria at the forefront of understanding user requirements and providing solutions that use the best combination of technologies to meet the business needs of its customers.
At Sopra Steria, we understand the complex environments in which our clients operate and the unique challenges they face. We have extensive experience across the policing sector and have been a trusted partner to our clients for over 35 years.
https://www.soprasteria.co.uk/industries/public-safety