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Strategy

Our vision and approach for digital and data

This document sets out the approach that the CPS' digital and data service will be taking over the next 18 months to support CPS 2025, prepare for the Spending Review and the development of CPS 2030.

OUR CURRENT POSITION

We're refreshing our approach to digital and data now because so much has changed since we published our digital strategy. In the last five years we:

  1. Enabled hybrid working across the organisation with the introduction of Microsoft 365, a new, faster and safer way of connecting to CPS systems and laptops that are significantly quicker and staff trained in how to work safely wherever they are
  2. Built new casework tools to support prosecutors and caseworkers on the frontline and deciding to replace CMS. Our new case review app has already reduced the time to make a charging decision by up to 30 minutes for some staff with further improvements expected throughout the year. Our email automation tool has reduced the low value work of manually logging emails to cases. Together, these will save 10,000 hours for our staff this year and our structured MG3 app makes us more resilient when CMS is unavailable
  3. Transformed the receipt and onward sharing of material through our successful "war on discs" by adoption of new evidence sharing cloud platforms, and the development of interfaces with Common Platform to improve working with the courts and other CJS partners
  4. Established skills in strategic areas such as user research, architecture and cybersecurity, so that we can respond to the growing challenges at the frontline
  5. Built a more robust ecosystem of suppliers – from all our IT being provided by a single supplier to a set of relationships with more than 20 suppliers working to common standards and approaches for which we take responsibility

We're proud of these achievements. We did them not just to make a difference to the job of delivering justice but to inform how we could do this at larger scale. Following our last digital strategy we have a clearer sense of what we can achieve and what colleagues now expect of our service.

THE WORLD IN WHICH WE OPERATE

There are six key trends that need to inform our approach:

  1. The considerable pressure on the frontline where a higher caseload is now the norm. This means we are managing more live cases, where the details of a case continue to evolve before they reach court whilst some of our users lack the digital confidence to use new solutions
  2. The financial pressure facing the public sector meaning it's more important than ever to ensure we're working as productively as possible to achieve the right outcomes
  3. The growing security threats we face from a range of highly sophisticated groups
  4. The challenge of recruiting and retaining the best talent in key roles – whether that's criminal lawyers, commercial experts or software engineers
  5. The acceleration of technological capabilities , particularly in machine learning and artificial intelligence which are changing the nature of crime and investigations as well as presenting new opportunities for thinking differently about how we work
  6. Ongoing changes to legislation and cross-justice working frequently requires changes to legacy systems which can be difficult to implement at pace

As a result, we need to work differently to meet the challenges facing our colleagues and the wider criminal justice system.

OUR VISION

Simple, intuitive tools and safe access to data enables colleagues to focus on high quality casework to support the delivery of justice

HOW WE'LL ACHIEVE THIS

We will move towards this vision by embarking on four missions. We will work towards these missions by setting objectives over a period of roughly 9-15 months and setting key results that we want to achieve each quarter.

There are a range of ways that each mission can be tracked and some of the progress will be intangible. However, we will use a handful of measures to build a picture of whether we're making progress.

OUR DEDICATION TO MEETING USER NEEDS SAVES COLLEAGUES' TIME

Starting with users and their needs makes things better. Our understanding of users and what they need is our unique value in DID.

How we achieve this mission

  1. We invest time in listening to users. Every colleague in the team spends time listening to users each month to increase our understanding of why it matters to meet their user needs
  2. We prefer to say 'people' or 'colleagues' wherever we can. People don't see themselves as users. However, users may include victims and witnesses, police officers, the Courts or other stakeholders in criminal justice.
  3. We describe what we're doing and why, in the voice of users
  4. We distinguish between user wants and user needs. If there's a better way of giving users what they need, we promote this but advise users rather than telling them we know best.
  5. We use insights from users to redesign what we do to make things as simple as they can be. We must adhere to case law, policy and standards. But that won't prevent us from finding out and gently challenging when custom practice or guidance appears to make things more complex than the value they add.
  6. We work hard to identify all users. Our user research is inclusive, representing people with different abilities and representative. Users may not necessarily be working for the CPS but include managers, ministers or other stakeholders in the criminal justice system
  7. We search for needs users may not articulate. Non-functional requirements such as performance and security are also a user need, but may be less obvious but without them,
  8. We work with subject matter experts to understand the processes and business requirements, but not instead of observing and learning from users
  9. This also doesn't mean users need to be involved in everything we do. There will be few user needs associated with a database upgrade or device patching. But if we default to understanding users needs and explaining what users need we will get it right more often than if we choose when to involve users.
  10. We don't stop at understanding user needs. In designing systems and processes, we must demonstrate compliance with the Service Standard, our legal obligations (eg Data Protection Act 2018 - data protection by design) and Governmental Security and Data Standards.

We will measure our progress on this mission by tracking:

  • The amount of time we free-up for users through our work (net of time lost to outages)
  • The proportion of users who believe the tools we give them to do their job will improve in the next three months
  • The proportion of users who believe that new technology has been designed to meet their needs

PROACTIVE SECURITY EMPOWERS PEOPLE TO WORK SAFELY

Our colleagues, victims and witnesses and everyone in the criminal justice system needs confidence information remains secure. We face growing threats and depend on people and processes to keep things safe. Working proactively can give colleagues confidence that we're supporting them to keep working safely.

How we achieve this mission

  1. Embed security as part of our culture and in the design throughout everything we do
  2. Ensure everyone understands their responsibilities towards security
  3. Know our education and awareness programmes are growing user confidence in acting responsibly whilst being aware of the risks without being fearful of their safety
  4. Use automated tools to reduce the number of people with access to datasets containing personal information
  5. Continue to have robust processes for responding to security concerns and risks
  6. Have a mindset that encourages people to raise concerns and share openly what we learn from security breaches (where it's safe to do so)
  7. Respond proactively to potential risks to our security and promote an environment in which reporting a security breach is considered a positive step
  8. Learn from other organisations that have a 'safety first' culture and explore how their approaches can be adapted to our context
  9. Ensuring we've got the right range of the most advanced tooling possible to ensure we can identify risks
  10. Increasing our capacity by training more specialists in cybersecurity

We will measure our progress by tracking:

  • The number of threats that we identify and their seriousness
  • Users' perception of their security responsibilities and engagement with mandatory training
  • Time taken between detection of a threat and when it is sufficiently mitigated

AN INQUISITIVE, INCLUSIVE TEAM BUILDS DIGITAL CONFIDENCE

We need to continue learning so that we grow the digital skills in the CPS and can support each other in building rewarding careers. We tap into the experience and skills in delivering digital and data services across the public sector. An inclusive culture helps us work better together and design solutions that work for everyone. We must avoid digital practices that reduce people's confidence in the tools we provide and the way we work.

How we achieve this mission

  1. Make time for formal and informal learning and ensure our learning complements our personal and team goals
  2. Tackle our actions and beliefs when they prevent us from being truly inclusive
  3. Find ways of engaging our colleagues in conversations about technology and data without resorting to jargon or metaphors
  4. Be intentional about our culture and have the confidence to call-out behaviour that's inconsistent with our intentions
  5. Develop significantly the number of apprenticeships and other talent development opportunities
  6. Align to the DDAT skills framework (or equivalent) wherever possible so that people can develop their careers beyond CPS
  7. Harness our culture, ways of working and commitment to career development in our recruitment materials
  8. Develop a tool to help convert concepts and language from the digital world into terms that engage rather than exclude non-technology professionals

We will measure our progress by tracking:

  • Staff engagement in the annual cross-government People Survey, supported by regular pulse surveys
  • The diversity of our team and of the teams that we partner with to ensure that we're representing the communities we serve
  • The proportion of colleagues that are confident in using digital skills

EFFICIENT PROCESSES DELIVER VALUE SOONER AND MORE OFTEN

We organise everything we do so that we can deliver small amounts of value regularly to achieve better outcomes and reduce risk.We ensure our governance is consistent with Agile principles but adapt how we engage with stakeholders to the context of the work.

How we apply this

  1. We make sure we understand the value we're trying to deliver – not just the solution that's been identified
  2. We document our processes, ensuring that we only have as many steps as needed
  3. We automate processes where it saves money and reduces the risks of error
  4. We break down big challenges to small chunks that we can test through doing
  5. We judge progress according to the value we're delivering to users
  6. We think creatively about how to change what we do to prioritise the regular delivery of value, whilst never compromising our security or losing sight of the overall value for money
  7. We don't use this approach to avoid tackling the riskiest assumptions in a project or delay doing the things which are most complex
  8. We continue to identify aspects of our delivery process that are inconsistent with this goal and redesign them wherever feasible
  9. Where working code, pictures and data communicate more clearly and accurately, we are confident to show work in progress to learn more from feedback and provide greater assurance
  10. We get the 'right people in the room', and once a decision is made, commit to making it successful

We do this because:

  1. It enables us to reduce the risk involved in spending time and money pursuing a solution where success depends on user behaviour
  2. It ensures we can continue to test and learn, responding rapidly to what users need
  3. It reduces the dependencies and complexities involved in making change work at a larger scale
  4. Done well, it gives users more confidence and visibility of what's happening

We will measure our progress by tracking:

  • The number of processes in DID documented in our Standard Operating Procedures
  • The average time it takes from starting something to delivering the first benefit to users
  • The proportion of failed changes to ensure it remains low

NEXT STEPS

We will review this approach in response to CPS 2030, the organisation-wide strategy currently under development. We will continue to report on progress through our OKR process and celebrate and reflect on delivery via the monthly strategy all-hands meeting which is open to all CPS staff and suppliers.

Work in Progress!

This site is a work in progress and any opinions contained here are intended to spark discussion within each discipline's community of practice.

Last update: 2024-01-16
Created: 2023-09-25