The NSW Police has signed a $1 million contract for a labour management solution to streamline its complex rostering requirements, optimise staff levels and help improve operational agility.
The solution, Workforce Central from Kronos, is expected to help the police force deal with the intricate rostering process involved in providing the right number of officers with the appropriate skills at the right time and location.
In June 2003 NSW Police started a global search for a new labour management solution to replace its ageing rostering system and finally decided on the Kronos solution.
The implementation stage of the project has started, with initial pilots planned from September 2004 through to January 2005 in both metropolitan and regional stations to enable all aspects of the system and its configuration to be tested before the final solution goes live across the state early in 2005.
The state's police force is divided into five geographical regions, which further divide into 80 local area commands and various other specialist units. Rostering occurs at this level on stand-alone PCs. The Workforce Central solution will be fully available via the corporate intranet, enabling the daily roster to be updated in real time from any PC.
The project will focus heavily on business process re-engineering to enable NSW Police to incorporate best practices into its core processes. The police force is also partnering with the CSIRO in the research and development of an additional module, which will use data from other police systems, like COPS and the CIDS radio call-out system, to enable intelligence-driven, demand-based rostering of future staffing requirements.