ACCREDITATION WORKS

Case Number 46  

Accreditation works for the Prince William County (VA) Office of Public Safety Communications, a premier community of over 320,000 residents in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.  We are a diverse organization of honest, hardworking employees, who trust each other to do the right thing and make the right decision. The Office of Public Safety Communications encourages continuous learning for staff and recognizes achievements and contributions. We believe in maximizing staffs’ talents, skills, and creativity and having fun. This management approach is endorsed by Chief Charlie T. Deane of the CALEA Law Enforcement Accredited Prince William County (VA) Police Department and Chief Mary Beth Michos of our county’s Department of Fire and Rescue, who together oversee the Office of Public Safety Communications.

Since becoming accredited in March 2003, we have twice conducted surveys of callers to 9-1-1 and our non-emergency number. Both times, 100% of those who responded to the survey were satisfied with the call-takers service. Also, for two consecutive years, our survey of police and fire employee satisfaction has been at over 92%. Attrition has declined to less than 6% and complaints per 1,000 of the 9-1-1 calls received have also declined. Although we cannot attribute all these results to accreditation, it certainly can be credited with being a key contributor to our improved performance and retention of personnel.

We constantly compare our service efforts and accomplishments against other regional agencies and have now added fellow CALEA Accredited, category C-sized public safety communications agencies to this comparison. Besides sharing policies and procedures with these fellow accredited agencies, each year we also try to compare our spending with the quantity and quality of service for our citizens, with theirs. We also look to see if we are providing more or less service than in prior years, and if we are effectively accomplishing our key objectives.

In meeting the CALEA performance measurement standards we see key operating variances that may require attention. The measurement and reporting of performance information allows us to be aware of where we stand and when action is necessary to improve performance. The old axiom “what gets measured, gets done” applies. Accreditation promotes public accountability and comparisons to performance in other agencies foster a healthy spirit of competition.

We pursued accreditation as a learning exercise – intent on finding what we can improve and then doing what it takes to make the improvement. We systematically examined our agency through the lens of CALEA’s nationally recognized framework of communications standards. They tell us “what” we should have in place and should track to achieve excellence. We determine “how” we should go about achieving the level of high performance and creating the culture of excellence for our agency. Accreditation works for Prince William County by helping us improve performance through standardization and compliance monitoring.

Captain Alfred E. Miller, Director

Prince William County (VA) Office of Public Safety Communications

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