Traditionally, police performance has been largely assessed in terms of statistics such as crime rates and, more recently, community satisfaction. However, while these major approaches can provide an indication of what police may spend their time on, they do not directly inform us of what they do spend their time on. In October, 1999, at the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics Information Day organised by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, South Australia Police (SAPOL) showcased an emerging method by which police time spent on certain activities can be measured.
Known as “activity measurement”, this approach is a significant management information tool. A broad example, using the SAPOL experience, of the type of information that can be elicited from the data is reported in this paper. SAPOL expect that this measurement data will be an important source of performance and budgeting information for the future, and so have trialed an electronic survey method to improve the methods used in this approach.