College of Policing

What Works Centre

The What Works Centre for Crime Reduction is hosted by the College of Policing and is part of a UK government initiative to develop What Works Centres to improve the way organisations create, use and share high quality evidence for decision making. Method4 worked with the College and University College London (UCL) to create a visually appealing website with an interactive crime reduction toolkit and research map.

THE SERVICES WE PROVIDED

Application Development

Digital Services Delivery

Digital Transformation

Web Design

The interactive toolkit provides access to the crime reduction evidence base, enabling users to weigh up evidence on the impact, cost and implementation of various interventions. Users can filter and sort interventions, drill down into more detail and pin them so they are highlighted on future visits to the site. Using a ranking framework known as EMMIE, users to able to summarise each interventions impact on crime (Effect), how it works (Mechanism), where it works (Moderators), how to implement (Implementation) and what it costs (Economic), allowing the evidence to be used most effectively to influence crime reduction decisions.

The interactive crime reduction research map shows details of ongoing policing related research being conducted at universities and other institutions across the UK. The map, which can be zoomed and panned by users, identifies the locations of institutions and their research projects, which can then be filtered according to region and topic of research.

The What Works Centre can be found at whatworks.college.police.uk.

CHALLENGES

create an attractive and engaging website that is fully responsive across multiple devices including mobile phones and tablets
content management to allow College of Policing staff to easily update the site
fully interactive toolkit with an easy to understand rating and ranking framework
research map to display institutions and allow filtering of research projects
resilient, high-availability requirements

TECHNOLOGY

.NET

Sharepoint

AZURE

THE SOLUTION

SharePoint 2013 content and document management system
bespoke toolkit providing highly interactive access to underlying SharePoint data
load-balanced, resilient SharePoint server farm hosted in Microsoft Azure
interactive research map using Google maps API

OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS

allows College of Policing staff to manage content, crime reduction data and research projects
provides Police and Crime Commissioners and other stakeholders with knowledge, tools and guidance to help target their resources more effectively
sharing knowledge of "what works" with public to build confidence in the police service and partners
strengthens collaborative links between the police service, crime reduction partners and the academic sector

We’re really proud of our work on this project and especially our Technical Director, Darren Chapple who led the project and received a Chief Constable's Commendation for his work on the crime reduction toolkit.

Christian Coates, Managing Director - Method4

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