Essay Example: North Carolina Department of Public Safety - Public Safety Strategic Plan

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety continues to work closely with the local communities to ensure safety and security for every citizen of the state. For this purpose, the state's public safety department is a conglomerate of areas that include departments like the fire department, office of emergency management, criminal justice department, and police departments that continue to work together towards providing a safe and secure public space. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, continually changing situations in health and the economy have prompted the need to refocus on ensuring reliable and safe environments throughout the state. To compound the already delicate situation of the global pandemic, the country and the state of North Carolina have been struggling with mass protests prompted by perceived injustice in the police department. This trend of civil unrest profoundly challenges the position of the safety strategy in the livelihoods of diverse local communities. Currently, the NCDPS employs over 37,000 individuals, with 25,000 of them being full-time personnel.

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In this analysis, the author shall attempt to analyze the various provisions and components of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) strategic plan. The report will weave through the critical elements of a strategic plan, including strategy formulation, mission, planning process, implementation, reassessment, and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats components. This analysis of the strategic plan shall intend to inform the legitimacy of the strategic document in fairly and feasibly addressing the public health concerns within the state's counties and towns. The success of strategic planning has been evident in a variety of diverse health and public safety contexts despite the difficulty in implementation. The organization's principal aim includes focusing;

"…citizen and legislative attention on law enforcement and public safety issues, such as the supervision of offenders in prison or on community corrections, justice reinvestment, re-entry planning, drinking and driving, underage access to alcohol and tobacco, crime prevention, victim services, homeland security, and preparation for, as well as response to, disasters and state emergencies" (Perry, 2016, p.2).

Strategy and Formulation

The key priority of this multidepartment Public Safety Strategic Plan of North Carolina is to prevent crimes and promote community safety through proactive awareness creation and community involvement. Being a multidisciplinary organization in structure and outline, the NCDPS has outlined the 5Ps of Perform, People, Prevent, Prepare, and Protect as the critical strategic performance goals for complete consideration in their service delivery. Inter-agency collaboration and strategic communication and the critical appraisal of both the financial and human capital and output allow the department to continue leading human-centered emergency services and promotion of safe spaces for all the citizens of the state. While formulating the strategy, NCDPS prioritized the five performance goals to inform their functioning and community-driven, value-focused services.

While formulating the strategic planning framework, the organization expressed several critical objectives of the organization in personally addressing each of the 5Ps that constituted the focal area for the plan. To ensure clarity in the strategic direction of the organization, the policymakers divided each of the 5Ps of the plan into sub-goals that were defined by concise and SMART goals. These goals ensured that the overall strategic direction of the organization was sufficiently maintained by proactively addressing the critical factors within the internal and external components of the organization. Featured in the introduction of the strategic document, the objectives of the goals acted as the driver for the following elements of the plan. The long-term objectives that are outlined under each goal serve to promote unity through the departments and define the scope of organizational direction for the NCPS. As we observed, the organizations, strategy is a heterogeneous interaction of shared and learning models of the 'The strategy wheel model' (Steensen, 2014). The strategic direction of the organization is as such proactive, people-centered, preventive, and preparation based. In the formulation of the strategic plan, NCPS identifies a total of 157 objectives and describes the initiatives for achieving such objectives. Concise measures of achievement and success then accompany these goals and objectives. Such standards of accomplishment are stated with a focus on the initiatives and the specific components of the multi-departmental organization that must drive the initiatives. The initiatives are, for the sake of interfaculty structure of the organization, assigned to particular departments and any elements of overlaps sufficiently addressed.

The strategic formulation of the organization's strategic plan involves an analysis of the opportunities and probable challenges that may influence the smooth functioning of the organization. A proactive scanning of an organization's internal and external environments is an essential consideration while formulating an efficient strategic document. Environmental scanning during strategy formulation allows the organization to identify the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and challenges to the accomplishment of defined goals and objectives. Specific activities and initiatives under the organization's departments must, as such, be outlined with a deep focus on the need for sensitivity to the environment (Esfahani et al., 2018). According to their executive summary, the Department for Public Safety (DPS) outlines the importance of a collaborative and expansive strategic plan by stating that:

A strategic plan, especially in the realm of Public Safety and Homeland Security, must be a living, breathing document specific enough to inform and direct action, and general enough to account for changing climates, technologies, events, and initiatives (Perry, 2016, p.2).

This proclamation by DPS signifies their belief in a document that is both sensitive to the internal complexities of North Carolina's Public Safety Department and the external provisions from the intricacies of societal engagement. This strategic planning document thereby adopted a 3-year strategy that aimed to bridge both the technological and humanitarian gap in the achievement of the preventive and human-centered goals of the safety and security department.

Mission and Mandates

During such sensitive and unpredictable times as well as the politically charged society, the legitimacy and ethical value proposition of such an organization as the public safety organization are non-negotiable (Dibrell et al., 2014). As the corrections system of the nation continues to face close questioning of their ethical astuteness, the safety department must always aim to stay on the side of the community by promoting fair practices and justice to all. As such, the organization needs to develop a shared meaning with the public and the client system. While outlining its vision, values, and mission, the organization thereby aims to identify the reason for their unique existence. The section allows an organization to convince the client base of the particular reasons for their existence beyond merely the activities and interventions. The vision and mission of an organization enable it to give meaning to the purposes and objectives of its parts (Dibrell et al., 2014). While the vision sets out the organization's unifying purpose and long-term reason for existence, the mission outlines the shorter-term purposes that the organization must achieve while aiming to achieve the overlying purpose/vision.

For NCDPS, the vision statement reads, "To provide the finest safety and security services for all North Carolinians" (Perry, 2016, p.11). As such, the organization's long-term purpose for existence entails the provision of the best levels of security and safety for all citizens of North Carolina. While attempting to work with NCDPS, thereby, an individual must be able to share in such a belief system. To achieve the vision, the organization then states the mission statement as;

"Safeguard and preserve the lives and property of the people of North Carolina through prevention, protection, and preparation with integrity and honor" (Perry, 2016, p.11).

While formulating the goals of this strategic plan, thus, the organization stayed sensitive to the mission of safeguarding their livelihoods and protecting their dignity through honor and integrity. The mandates and mission of an organization, thereby, justify why the organization must exist. The DPS of North Carolina, as such, outlined their purpose for existence as they wish to promote the property and human life protection in the state through ethical and responsible safety procedures.

Finally, in the mandates and mission section, the DPS also listed concise values for the organization. The value system of an organization sets out the organization's culture. The organization's values include integrity, safety, customer service, professionalism, quality, and diversity. As such, DPS purposes of living by the ethical values stated and any employees or partners, as well as the general society aiming to work alongside DPS must also respect the beliefs.

Plan the Plan Process

While planning the strategic planning process, the DPS considered the procedures required in planning and later formulating a higher-level strategic plan. While preparing for the process, the organization first determined the objectives of the plan and the initiatives needed to follow such objectives to completion. While outlining the objectives of the plan, the organization also considered the intricate interaction of various departments and the activities that each department in the organization requires to follow to meet the objectives. When the events and initiatives had matched the goals and objectives that were planned, the organization then scheduled for the budget for completing the initiatives (Dibrell et al., 2014). Furthermore, the organization purposed to outline the human and other resources that would then complement the actualization of the community safety initiatives through the state. The interaction of diverse personnel was thereby essential to achieve a holistic approach to address the safety of all the citizens. As such, the complete cooperation of interrelated systems within the organization would need to be sufficiently organized to minimize the instances of task overlaps and non-streamlined hierarchies of power. The last essential resource used by the organization was the aspect of technological integration in the strategic process. The technology was both a resource in the strategic plan for safety planning and a planned strategic direction for the organization. The penultimate section of the plan outlined a plan for introducing and implementing technological changes in the organization (Esfahani et al., 2018).

Once the resources were planned for in line with the objectives and initiatives of the DPS, the next requirement involved the setting of a timeline for the plan. The timeline for the strategic plan for NCDPS covered a period between 2017 and 2019. Within the three years, the organization intended to implement the 157 objectives stated and assess their impacts on societal change processes. The planning process, as such, also focused on the outlining of an assessment methodology for the organization's target goals.