Thread by @DvdHmltn

Just caught up with @ScotPolAuth TV and this caught my ear.
Grant Macrae eloquently describes what benefit tracking should be. Unfortunately, that's not what is being reported to the Authority.

It's not actual benefits that are being reported its actual perceived benefits.
If for example I design a new call handling system and perceive at the business case stage that it will save the time of 10 officers because it's more efficient, that sounds good.

But if that business case failed to capture disbenefits, for example transferring demand on to a crime system that costs the equivalent of 6 extra officers time, then because the disbenefit wasnt captured in the business case, it isnt counted.

So the perceived benefit in the business case was 10 and because all the project actions were executed, the actual perceived benefit was 10 👍🏻

BUT the displaced demand means that the actual benefit was only 4.
👎🏻

So actual perceived benefit (what @PoliceScotland calls actual benefit) is only useful for measuring whether a projects actions were executed.

The methodology of using it to measure such actions is all that @hmics and internal auditors have validated.

The (real) actual benefit - the only thing that matters to the public isn't getting measured -or even known

And that, as every cop knows, is one of the reasons why the claimed time equivalent of 1700 cops that have apparently been saved by change programmes don't actually exist.

Now none of the foregoing means that there haven't been savings or service improvements- there have been, but on the numbers front- nowhere near what's being claimed.

But I'm sure @ScotPolAuth are aware of all that.