Underpinning our approach was the insight that policing was based on an unsustainable ‘parent-child’ relationship with the public. If the Met were to deliver the required service standards, in the context of greater demand, they would need to do so in partnership with an informed, empowered public. “The Police are the public, the public are the Police”.

It was essential to deliver sufficient take-up of digital policing services, both to reduce costs associated with physical channels and to deliver improved services to a larger number of users. On that basis, opportunities were prioritised and a series of pilots defined that would rapidly validate concepts that could be built into the solution.

The solution would deliver seamless self-service within a social engagement ecosystem that would also support crime and incident reporting through partner platforms. Leveraging relationships with partners would allow the Met to deliver better results and increased value for money.

The platform was built to be modular, scaleable and future-proof. It provides a range of capabilities and services that underpin delivery of local services. Local forces are able to tailor the mix of services and content to their community.

Key capabilities that the system provides include:

Digital channels to allow reporting of any crime or incident type

Smart triage - starting point for users wanting to report a crime or incident, asking only relevant questions to the scenario in order to manage risk, identify jurisdiction and advise/signpost users.

Forms engine - allows forces to build new online processes without technical support

‘Your area’ - a dashboard to present all local community information and conversation in one place, pulling the content from various sources and using tags to identify the right content to display

Use of social media in reporting and investigating possible crime; providing a police presence in online communities.

Significant benefits have already been delivered in London as a result of the platform:

100,000 reports of crime online over 12 months, with effective triaging meaning 90% require zero deployment. In some cases, particularly domestic and sexual assault, victims are actively choosing to use digital channels to make reports.

65% reduction in time spent by officers to triage contacts

90% of traffic allegations (RTI's) now received online

500% increase in traffic offence reporting, but with 4,000/month fewer calls relating to RTI's to the Met Police Contact Centre

14.5k enquiries resolved via Twitter (July 2016-to date) with 88% service satisfaction

1,500 officers trained to communicate with the public via social media showing significant increases in local area engagement.

As the platform rolls out nationally, these benefits will potentially scale to up to 43 Forces nationwide saving the public purse £millions.

Faced with a perfect storm of increasing demand for policing services, reduced budgets and unmet expectations from 83% of Londoners, our work demonstrates the transformative power of putting customers and staff first and leveraging technology to solve challenges. By using digital to connect the public to the people protecting them, we’ve transformed the world’s oldest police force, enabling 100,000 reports of crime online, reducing time spent triaging contacts by 65%, saving 7,200 police hours across road-traffic incidents alone and providing a platform for how the public interacts with police nationwide. In short, we’ve created the world’s largest digital police force.

Feb 2015 - Jul 2015 - Digital vision and strategy definition

Our team worked with the Met (from front-line officers all the way up to Commissioner) and the public to co-create a clear strategic vision. The result was a purpose distilled into a simple expression:

“The experience of contacting the police through digital channels will be as helpful, personal and reassuring as approaching an officer on your street”

This was underpinned by an ambitious set of objectives - expressed as three strategic pillars - that would drive confidence and change in the relationship between police and public:

Inform - “I know how and when to contact the police, and I understand what will happen when I do”

Reassure - “I am confident the police are tackling the issues that are important to me and my community”

Empower - “I have a valuable role to play in keeping London safe”

Equally importantly, we had to quickly understand how the Met needed to change as an organisation to deliver against the vision and proposed services. Our team defined a strategic roadmap that would guide the design and development of an integrated service platform. This provided a good basis for creating change within the Met. The Met teams embraced working at a very fast pace and to new methodologies - such as customer centricity, agile, fail fast, iterative design process and design thinking.

Oct 2015 - Mar 2016 - Digital police station user experience design

The first step: designing a digital police station that offered the public a new simple, effective way to interact with the police. This had to be service driven, public centred, action oriented, engaging and responsive. The solution was co-created and validated with staff and members of the public to create an online service that was accessible and usable for all.

Mar 2016 - Mar 2017 - Design, build and launch of the new Met online service platform, including online crime reporting

Our team worked closely with the Met (and our technical partners) to develop a range of new services and capabilities, in the form of a digital police station, launching a Beta version in October 2016 and officially going live in March 2017. Throughout the project, our work was highly iterative - co-creating and testing with users throughout the process. We used analytics, business metrics and user feedback to evaluate the Beta version of the site and continue to make improvements before full launch.

Our team was fully embedded within the Met, working on the designs and the content of the new platform but also helping to transform the organisation. We worked very closely with key stakeholders, bringing them on a journey to a more agile and customer-centric way of working, and preparing them for the next phases: to react, adapt, improve and carry on developing the vision.

June 2016 - ongoing - Transitioning police services online

Digitising paper based processes to simplify the experience for users and deliver efficiency quickly. The team began with transitioning road traffic incident reporting to a digital process and moved on to deliver further online processes including contacting the police, thanks and complaints, reporting anti-social behaviour, requesting a welfare check.

June 2016 - Nov 2016 - Public contact with the police through social media

Trialling the use of social media as a way of identifying crime, responding to requests for help and disseminating information. This initial trial designed the approach and mechanisms by which the Met could deal with public contact via social media (in this case Twitter) in a way that allowed contact to be effectively triaged and managed, whilst remaining secure and auditable. As part of this we also designed and delivered a social media and ‘Your Area’ training package for 1500 officers and staff.

August ‘16 - Feb 2017 - Police social engagement ecosystem

Creating a framework that would connect the public with their local police, facilitating a two-way dialogue, increasing trust and confidence and maintaining a sense of police visibility as the budget available for front line officers and police front counters is reduced. Social networks would allow local police to unlock an empowered public to take an active role in community safety - thereby multiplying the police’s reach and influence.

Aug 2017 - Decision made to use the Met platform as a basis for the national policing platform

The Met platform was well-received by both the public and policing organisations nationally. The positive results the Met were seeing were sufficient to recommend the new service platform as a basis for a single online home for policing in the UK and Wales.

Sep 2017 - ongoing - Ongoing transitioning of services online. Programme established to roll-out national policing platform across all 43 Police Forces in the UK and Wales.

Work continued to transition a total of 37 existing services to the digital platform including reporting anti-social behaviour and requesting a welfare check online.

The Digital Public Contact Programme (within the Digital Policing Portfolio) has also been established to support the roll-out of the Met police platform nationally and, based on the original vision, further extend the capabilities it offers.

In 2015 the largest police force in the UK was facing major challenges; increasing demand on policing services, reduced budgets for all public services and an expectation from Londoners (across almost all demographics) that the Met’s services be available online at the same level of quality they might experience at Amazon.

Inside the Met there was also deep skepticism towards change based on a history of long, expensive programmes with disappointing results. Legacy technology and processes meant that agility and flexibility were difficult to achieve and the lowest risk solution was pursued before the most effective or innovative.

An entirely new approach was required that would place the needs of the public and Met staff at the heart of the solution. One that would marry technology with deep customer insight, that would deliver progress quickly and that would drive fundamental behavioural change across the organisation.