Foreword

Contact centres are increasingly used by the private sector and government organisations for interacting with the public.

Such centres enable standardised processing, better matching of staffing levels to contacts, and monitoring of service quality.

On average the Police Assistance Line (PAL) answers around 1,300 calls and takes around 650 reports of minor crime and non-urgent incidents a day, which it records directly onto the NSW Police crime database.  Contact centre operators provide information to local Police to assist their response to these crimes. The PAL work is primarily designed to release police for frontline duties.

Periodically, we review the extent to which agency performance and practice have changed since we conducted an audit. We audited the Police Assistance Line in 2003, and this follow-up audit answers two key questions:

§      Is the PAL (131444) now performing better?

§      Is the contact centre which operates the PAL now better managed?

I hope that this report is useful to NSW Police and other government contact centre managers in assisting performance improvement and thereby enhancing satisfaction with the services provided.

Peter Achterstraat

Auditor-General

December 2006