“Change will never be this slow again.” – Police Digital Strategy 2020-30
The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) Policing Digital Strategy 2020 to 2030 has been revised to cover 2025 to 2030. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) also recently launched its Digital Strategy for 2025 to 2030.
In this premium podcast episode, I summarise, compare, and contrast both these new policing digital strategies for you. I also explore the aims, skillsets needed and how this all relates to your role as an aspiring promotion candidate and your leadership ambitions. Challenges for the future, changes and examples of recent tech developments in forces are covered too.
“Some of those changes may be difficult and may force us to rethink our current ways of working entirely, but they are changes we need to make.” – NPCC
A series of 5 Year Missions?
“Change is the Only Constant.” – Marcus Aurelius
Policing’s ambition to embrace digital capability in the next 5 years will transform policing, achieving the policing vision 2030. By then it is intended policing will have access to modern solutions to enable them to better protect the public.
At the same time, a Home Office and College of Policing appointed Commission to review police leadership “at all levels” is also taking place. With military, private sector and academic perspectives included alongside policing viewpoints, this review is underway now and is expected to produce a blueprint for police leadership in England and Wales for decades to come.
Further to this review and over the same period 2025 to 2030, massive restructuring of policing is planned, making everything else look insignificant in comparison. That is reducing 43 forces down to 12 mega forces.
It certainly appears that a significant period of upheaval will occur to varying degrees affecting policing and the delivery of service quality to the public over the next few years. Hold onto your hats as they say!
A Digital North Star
The NPCC National Digital Strategy document…
“…acts as the strategic north star for all things digital data and technology (DDaT) in policing by providing the direction, purpose and high level roadmap.” – NPCC
In relation to the DDaT strategy, the intended outcome is to achieve the “five digital ambitions”. What are these five digital ambitions you might ask?
- Protect the Public
- Seamless Citizen Experience
- Enable Officers and Staff Through Digital
- Collaborate with the Private Sector
- Embed a Whole Public System Approach
The PSNI digital strategy is slightly different. In its announcement PSNI states its aims are to modernise its tools, systems and ways of working to improve how the public are served and to support frontline policing in delivering a more efficient service. It hopes to achieve the ‘impact statements’ for victims, community, and the workforce (set out in the table below), with intentions to:
- Give officers better technology they can use on the move
- Make it easier for the public to contact police online
- Improve how digital evidence is collected and managed
- Work more smoothly with partner organisations
The NPCC’s approach promotes “build once, use everywhere” efficiencies, fostering industry partnerships to avoid vendor lock-in. This might be a nod to the ‘mega-forces’ and regionalisation now on the horizon. In contrast, PSNI’s is regionally attuned to Northern Ireland’s unique socio-political landscape, including post-conflict community trust issues and smaller-scale operations.
Change Will Never Be This Slow Again…
The original NPCC 2020 strategy says “the pace of change has never been so fast, but it will never be so slow again”. Just five years later, the need for a midterm review has resulted in this revision to the national police digital strategy, with clear new measures to track progress towards achieving its digital ambitions.
Both of these digital strategies are aimed at protecting the public and following the ‘digital north star’, whilst navigating what will clearly be a challenging period for policing ahead over the next 5 years.
If you are an aspiring leader, manager and supervisor now, I encourage you to keep abreast of these developments. It’s great CPD for your strategic thinking. As a police leader, you’ll have people asking you about what’s going on, or you might even find yourself leading a project which contributes to such goals.
As part of your ongoing development and preparation for promotion, I’ll leave you with the following questions to ponder:
- Where do you fit into this future?
- What is the leadership you need to provide?
- What CPD choices now will support you?
Grab a coffee and listen to the podcast for more! I hope you enjoy the content.
Kind Regards, Steve
Don’t leave your promotion to chance. Get instant access to proven resources like my Digital Promotion Toolkit and Police Promotion Masterclass and start preparing like a pro today. Tune in to my extensive Police Promotion Podcast for powerful leadership tips. For tailored guidance and free initial coaching, please get in touch.
