You are a performance management expert brought in by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Department of the Interior for the country of Essland. The department is a branch of the Essland government which handles security, policing, immigration and border control. The CEO is a civil servant and he reports to the Minister for the Interior. The Minister for the Interior is an elected politician selected by the Prime Minister of Essland, who leads its government.

The newly-elected Minister for the Interior has instructed the CEO to implement his policy for improving the regional police forces’ performance by copying the method used for schools. In a recent initiative by the School’s Ministry, a league table for the hundreds of schools in Essland was created, showing the best and worst in terms of examination performance only, in order to motivate senior school managers to improve. The league table was used to create targets for assessing the schools’ and their managers’ performance. Additionally, parents in Essland have the right to choose which school their children attend and so often base their selection on league table performance. Therefore, the Minister has had a policy review body draw up a method of creating a league table for the police forces.

The CEO has requested your help to clarify his own thinking on this new policy for the four regional police forces in Essland (Cashire (C), Dashire (D), Eshire (E) and Fashire (F)). The CEO needs you to assess the use of the league table using the policy review body’s suggested method and has collected the data and calculation of the league table given in Appendix 1 to assist you. He also wants to assess whether the table will help in meeting the Department’s aim and goals for the police. The overall aim of the Department (and its police forces) is ‘to provide a value-for-money service to ensure that the community can live in safety with confidence in their physical and legal security’. The detailed goals of the Department are to:

– Tackle the underlying causes of crime and achieve long-term sustainable solutions
– Bring perpetrators to justice
– Provide protection and support for individuals and communities at risk of harm
– Respond to community needs by being accessible and engaging with their concerns

The CEO warned you, ‘I’m not interested in the performance of the forces. I’m interested in the method of assessment, so don’t waste time with your ideas on how to improve actual policing.’

The CEO also wishes to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the use of a league table, its link to targets and the likely reaction of employees to this system of performance management, especially as there is a strong union representing the police. He is worried about the employees’ attitude to the introduction of the system and its effects on their behaviour and their sense of accountability. He is also concerned about importing the use of a league table from the schools sector, as it might not be appropriate here.

Required:
(a) Evaluate the method of calculating and measuring the Force Scores for use in the league table in achieving the Department of the Interior’s aims and goals. (14 marks)