How to Evaluate and Improve Your Agency in 5 Easy Steps (Part 2)

Here’s steps three through five of a five-step process that will help you identify your campus public safety department’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as actions you can take to resolve challenges.

How to Evaluate and Improve Your Agency in 5 Easy Steps (Part 2)

Photo: Trueffelpix, Adobe Stock

Step 4: Assess the Health of Each Input and Associate the Level of Health With Each Affected Goal (Output)
This step is subjective and based on many factors. For instance, are all officers aware of associated requirements? Are they proficient and current in certifications? Are the inputs accessible to the officers? Perhaps a department recognizes the need to do something, such as conducting CPX/FTXs, but has not done so yet. This might receive a higher rating than a department that has taken no steps to do so.

A small committee of senior- and mid-management, officers and select civilian personnel, and a member from the academic community could review each input and determine its health. Once this review is complete, the health of each input is associated with the corresponding output.

In this analysis, a “stop-light” color is used to assess each input’s ability to achieve its associated goal. Each input is assessed on whether it is mission capable (green), partially mission capable (yellow), or not mission capable (red). Clearly, the more green that appears indicates a sound and capable department. Large areas of red, especially in high-priority mission areas, show where corrective efforts are most urgently needed.

Click to see the sample matrix full size

Step 5: Evaluate Overall Department Mission Capability
The Department Assessment sample matrix table above shows the results of this department-wide analysis. The scores should be determined as follows:

1. The total number of X’s in each row show which inputs affect the greatest number of outputs.

2. The total number of X’s in each column show how many inputs affect that goal. More X’s in a column suggest there are more “moving parts” associated with that goal.

3. Each column should be scored by adding the total number of green cells (three points each) plus yellow cells (two points each) plus red cells (one point each). A cell that is extremely deficient could be given a zero score.

4. Each column’s total should then be divided by its total maximum score [the number of X’s times three (which would be a perfect score for each impact)] to determine its percentage of mission capability.

5. Each goal should then be assessed as fully mission capable (a percentage of 75 percent or greater); partially mission capable (50-74 percent), or not mission capable (less than 50 percent).

The resulting matrix should provide a lot of valuable information. It tells us how capable we are in achieving our desired goals, where we are most deficient and what needs to be done to correct those deficiencies. Since one cannot eat an elephant all at once, we can prioritize corrective actions by first focusing on deficiencies that affect the greatest numbers of priority goals.

This abbreviated analysis reveals the department is mission capable in its first (safe campus) and fifth (avoid liability) goals. It is partially mission capable in all remaining goals except officer morale.

In this analysis, a chief’s first priority would likely be to begin fixing the high-impact red inputs (i.e., affecting at least six of seven goals): initiating training with local agencies and conducting campus-wide command post and field training exercises (perhaps adding participation by local police and fire responders). Next, the chief might move to the high-impact yellow inputs: training for unsworn personnel, increasing the numbers of officers and supervisors on duty during high crime periods, securing training venues, enhancing the ability to sustain long-term deployments, enhancing inter-operable communications with local responders and improving radio coverage. Many of these initiatives can be achieved at low or no cost. Furthermore, correcting the above inputs would have beneficial effects across all other mission areas.

The beauty of this methodology is it provides a chief, sheriff or head administrator of an agency with a persuasive tool for justifying and building support for funding requests. It also provides a tool by which one can assess the impact of programmatic improvements over time. Finally, it serves as a planning method for developing a long-term agency roadmap.

A Systematic Approach is More Effective
Every member of every department has a sense of his or her department’s strong and weak points. However, these opinions are often based on personal and episodic interactions and are neither systematic nor convincing. They offer little guidance in determining which problems should be corrected first and lack compelling persuasiveness that is crucial to building support from those who hold the department’s budget strings.

The foregoing methodology is a tool that is easy to use, instructive in its revelations, supports effective priority corrective actions, fosters sensible stewardship of precious resources a
nd can build support for budgets in resource-constrained environments. What’s not to love?

Lt. John Weinstein is the commander of Northern Virginia Community College Public Safety District 3. He is certified by Virginia’s Department of Criminal Justice Services as a firearms instructor and is his department’s lead firearms instructor. He also conducts firearms training at two local police academies. Lt. Weinstein can be reached at jweinstein@nvcc.edu. The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety magazine.

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About the Author

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Dr. and Lt. John Weinstein retired as a senior police commander at one of the country’s largest institutions of higher education where, in addition to other responsibilities, he directed officer and college-wide active incident response training and community outreach. He is a popular national and international speaker and is widely published on many institutional and municipal law enforcement matters. Weinstein also consults with Dusseau-Solutions on active incident and all-hazard topics involving schools, churches, businesses and other public venues.

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