Action Plan The Way Forward

• Individual public service organizations are often
challenged to find the money for necessary investments
in expertise and technology. A shared services
approach allows for these costs to be shared
by more than one organization.
Academic community
During the consultations we heard from the academic
community. Participants reinforced the appropriateness
of the recommendations contained in the interim report,
but also identified challenges that other police services
are facing:
• While much of our action plan reflects international
best practice, implementing this magnitude of
change is a challenge. It will be important for the
Service to take ownership of the direction and build
coalitions of support with different communities.
• Investing in crime prevention has been a challenge
for all police services. The key isn’t technical
solutions; it’s primarily a management challenge
that requires engagement with officers, governance
bodies, and the public, as well as dealing with legal
barriers and political issues.
• Police-community partnerships are typically led by
police and shaped mainly by their authority. In the
future, communities will need to lead more often,
although this can be a challenge because of limited
community resources. It will be important to ensure
that partnerships lead to positive outcomes and are
not partnerships for their own sake.
• More effective use of data, GPS and other geo-spatial
enabled technologies should be a major priority.
They enable better solutions that can also be implemented
quickly. Also, a principled approach to more
transparent data and information sharing is a key
component of building public trust.
• Policing is shifting on a continuum towards greater
professionalism. There is a role for university and
community college partners through specialized
programs.
• Academic partners can provide police services with
advice on community collaboration, engagement,
and consultation. They can also assist with research
on relevant best practices, including evidence-based
assessments of crime prevention programs in other
jurisdictions.
• Declining public trust in institutions is a challenge
for all public service organizations. Creating and
always demonstrating value needs to be one of the
goals of modernization. This value must be apparent
to the public and supported by evidence-based
research, which will in turn lead to enhanced trust.
Commercial sector
The Task Force heard from the commercial sector,
including organizations that have expertise in large-scale
transformations, change initiatives, and shared services.
Their insights were generally positive and affirmed our
direction. Participants suggested there are extensive lessons
to be learned from organizations which have dealt
with similar challenges:
• For transformation to result in meaningful change,
internal alignment and unity are important, just as
it’s important to be bold and take calculated risks.
• Taking action is critical to overcoming inertia,
particularly if some recommendations have been
made before.
• Through innovative approaches and mobilizing
community resources, other police services have
successfully undertaken similar transformations
aimed at delivering better service and intelligenceled
policing for less money.
• The TPS is not the only public sector organization
dealing with aging infrastructure including older
technology and paper-based processes.
• Technology and data can put officers and their work
in Toronto’s neighbourhoods at the center of policing
in ways that are much more efficient.
• Mobile digital technology is fundamentally changing
how all services in every sector are delivered,
giving the public and service providers access to
information anywhere, anytime and on any device.
However, funding for new technology is a challenge.
• Police services around the world are recognizing
the need to process and utilize massive amounts of
crime and intelligence data in a way that will enable
a predictive approach.
16 TORONTO POLICE SERVICE | TRANSFORMATIONAL TASK FORCE REPORT FINAL REPORT TORONTO POLICE SERVICE | TRANSFORMATIONAL TASK FORCE REPORT FINAL REPORT 17