Further Detail

The PT 6 Monthly Performance Report at Appendix A comprises of updates in relation to mainstreaming and delivery against Policing Together and the Joint Equality Outcomes for Policing. It describes progress between April and September 2023.

The report is part of a suite of performance reports based on the Performance Framework which includes measures of progress linked to the Equality Outcomes. This six monthly reporting supplements the updates included in quarterly performance reporting and provides additional detail and focus from an equality, diversity and inclusion perspective.

The mainstreaming section of the report provides key strategic updates which are aligned to Policing Together. Key reporting against the Joint Equality Outcomes for Policing are included within the report to ensure ability to comply with legislative reporting requirements. The report provides high-level progress updates, examples of national and local activities and their impacts and some key next steps that will be updated on through future reporting. The report is structured to cover Police Scotland commitment, actions, achievements/impact and next steps. This method of reporting is consistent with Police Scotland’s approach to the legislatively required Joint Equality Outcomes for Policing Mainstreaming report.

SCOTTISH POLICE AUTHORITY REPORTING

Following the launch of the Policing Together Strategy in September 2022 multiple positional and progress updates have been requested and provided to the SPA Board and SPA People Committee. This has included Bi Annual Workforce EDI Reports to People Committee, Annual Workforce EDI reporting to SPA Board and additional Policing Together Updates to both People Committee and SPA Board. It is envisaged that going forward the new and enhanced Policing Together 6 monthly Performance Report will fulfil reporting requirements.

The most recent Policing Together Update was reported to the SPA People Committee 29 August. As part of the update, work carried out to refine the Implementation Plan was presented to the Committee along with an illustrative template of the Performance Report at Appendix A. Members highlighted a need for more outcome and impact focused reporting supported by data and key measures in order to demonstrate effort is having the intended effect. This mirrors the ambition of Police Scotland and work is ongoing to strengthen the use of data.

DATA DEVELOPMENT

The development and delivery of the Performance Report is dependent on ongoing work to improve the analysis and presentation of key data and measures.

An EDI Performance Dashboard is being developed. The dashboard will be valuable in supplementing the updates in the 6 monthly Policing Together Performance Report. The proof of concept highlighted that there are strong links with the EDI workforce monitoring dashboard being produced by Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP), as well as other interdependencies which has paused the development of the EDI dashboard beyond the proof of concept at this stage.

SWP are developing Power BI workforce monitoring dashboards which will significantly improve access to EDI summary data and will enable tracking of tends over time. The dashboards will be updated monthly and will include data on:

• Workforce sex, age, disability, race, transgender, religion and sexual orientation
• Organisational segregation in terms of rank by age, disability, race, religion and sexual orientation
• Horizontal segregation in terms of function age, disability, race, religion and sexual orientation
• Leavers by age, disability, race, religion and sexual orientation
• Recruitment by age, disability, race, religion and sexual orientation
• Promotion by age, disability, race, religion and sexual orientation

The work is at final consultation phase.

The People and Development Data Owner Group has recently been established to provide wider strategic oversight of People and Development (P&D) data. This group is being led by the People and Development Data Owner, Nicky Page, with support to manage the group provided by the Data Governance Team. The group has responsibility for directing ownership of people data on behalf of Police Scotland, and in support of the Force Data Strategy. The Group feeds directly to the Data Governance Board where required and will have the authority to create tactical subgroups to progress complex issues.

The Data Governance Roadmap outlines the actions that the Data Governance team will be responsible for delivering. These primarily focus on the scope of P&D data, cataloguing the data (including definitions and location of the data), recording agreed data standards, measuring, and improving data quality and providing visualisations to allow the Data Governance team and business users to effectively track and remediate Data Quality issues. There is no firm timeline in place for this activity, however it is expected that the full roadmap, based on likely initial scope, would be completed in the coming nine months to a year based on current resources. This is in line with the timescales for Roadmap activities within other data domains.

The Group has identified some significant barriers in terms of the capabilities of systems which are decades old, operate in isolation and were not designed with reporting in mind. This means that it is very difficult and labour intensive to extract meaningful insights. Barriers have been identified by the Data Governance Group around access to SCOPE data due to outstanding issues relating to the Data Protection Impact Assessment. These are currently being progressed. The Data Governance team is in the process of articulating a risk around accessibility of People and Development data and this will be recorded within the Enterprise Data Register on 4Risk, along with any relevant mitigation.

The Head of Data Strategy along with the People and Development Senior Management Team are liaising regarding options to enable better dashboards and data insights. The preferred option is to align to the strategic data delivery method being laid down by the Force-wide Analytics (FWA) Project under the Data Drives Digital Programme. This methodology allows for the maximum re-use of data and long term sustainability. The FWA Project however remains in its initial delivery phase and as such conversations on next steps continue.

CONCLUSION

Appendix A provides the Bi-Annual Policing Together Update. The additional detail in terms of our data development work is provided to update the Committee on our progress in this area.