Comparing patterns across policing

All nations have police services, and there is rich local diversity in how they operate. By working together, people who design policies and services for policing can learn from each other to achieve better outcomes.

The first-ever Public Design Conference (part of the World Design Congress Design Safari) contacted our team at the end of May 2025.

The conference was focused on identifying design patterns across borders, and our mini-conference was focused on patterns within the policing sector.

Our first thoughts in Police Scotland were that it would be wonderful to connect with other design teams working in policing across the world. But wondered whether we are mature enough in using design patterns and had anything to share.

This post is part of a series about public design patterns. They are inspired by the Public Design Conference, and published between the Winter 2026 and Summer 2027. Read other posts in this series here.

Our international team

At our first meeting, everyone was excited to connect. We had representatives from:

Politiet (Norway): Ka Yuk Tong, Karen Byskov, and Alexandra Langeland Politie (The Netherlands): Ivo Salters Inter-ministerial Directorate for Public Transformation (France): Ariane Epstein Home Office (England and Wales): Sally Halls and Sarah Fox Police Scotland (Scotland): Jonathan Baldwin, Aran Browning and me

It was immediately clear that everyone saw the potential in using design patterns and wanted to connect with other countries and learn about their work. We wanted to talk about the challenges before we talked about solutions (and design patterns are solutions).

Design teams have different scope

Each team shared their context in terms of governance, government priorities, challenges and how design fits in. There were many differences regarding the scope of each team, related to where design sits.

It was interesting to notice the difference in remit between different design teams. The context of each design team influences the scope of work and types of results, and patterns.

The French Inter-Ministerial Directorate embed a design team that bridges priorities from the government and local design offices within public innovation Labs. It sits in-between sectors and has a holistic approach to a problem.

The UK Home Office’s Innovation and Policy Lab is a design team working across the 43 independent police forces. Their design work influences policy as well as digital solutions. The design team from the Norwegian Police is part of the IT unit while the design team from the Dutch Police is part of the information management division. Both teams work solely on digital areas.

Inter-Ministerial Directorate for Public Transformation

The French Inter-Ministerial Directorate for Public Transformation shared a case study about work done to help victims of domestic violence. This work was carried out locally in the department of Rhône.

They built a detailed journey map from the victim's point of view. Many of the problems in supporting services happened during handovers between different professionals, especially in the ability to follow victims across different areas such as health, education, police, and justice. Through many iterations, the map became so complete that it is now used by professionals in the field as a tool to raise awareness among frontline actors. It also serves as a shared tool to bring together all sectoral actors around the same table, step outside their silos, adopt the victim’s perspective, and a common understanding of the journey to find better local solutions to support victims.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is made up of four nations: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. During these discussions we had attendance from the Home Office, which oversees the police forces in England and Wales, and Police Scotland which is devolved.

Home Office

The Home Office oversees 43 police forces across England and Wales and shared its work on developing national approaches.

They presented a case study on strengthening enforcement of speeding offences, which involved redesigning the letter that’s sent to members of the public after committing speeding offences. The design improvements made the letter easier to understand and increased public response rates by 5 percentage points. One police force even saw an 85% drop in related calls. These results led to the letter’s adoption as a national template, which multiple forces are now starting to implement.

Police Scotland

Police Scotland talked about a Service Catalogue for policing services and how this has been helping us to reflect on what police do and what users really want.

Politiet

The representatives from the Norwegian Police shared how the IT Unit is working to become more product oriented, moving away from a traditional 'delivery project’ set up (where the requirements and budget are fixed) to 'product areas', where teams can include members from different stakeholder groups as part of their unit.

This is to ensure teams are closer to the user needs and can deliver higher value, with more holistic and strategic creations. The first 'product area' was piloted in 2023 to connect different expertise across different fields. Since 2024, it has been the ambition to grow the number of product areas.

Politie

The Dutch designers gave us a glimpse of how challenging it must feel for police officers to navigate over 100 applications during their day-to-day.

In a workforce of more than 50,000 police officers, every second saved by making improvements in their applications makes a big difference.

One of the ways they do user research with police officers is using the 'Mobile Media Lab'. The truck serves multiple purposes, such as reaching police officers in their workplace, as well as offering opportunities for collaboration with communities. It was so successful that they now have two trucks.

Looking for patterns across governments

The intersection of design and police (and recognising that policing issues are connected to broader societal issues) is a key area where nations can learn from each other in the future.

For design, we should focus on:

multi-disciplinary working – the collaboration of different disciplines and design specialisms: Service Designers, UX designers, User Researchers, Behavioural Scientists, etc. participatory design - the participation of public servants and especially police officers in the design space either as users, colleagues or decision makers. governance and context - shape the scope of design work.

For policing, we should focus on:

trust – how we engage with members of the public whilst working on solutions can help rebuild that trust. citizen experience - the stakes can be life or death in policing. That’s why we need to start from people’s real experiences, and make sure they feel heard. Continuing the collaboration

These are starting points for continuing to share learning and exploration.

Our plan is to build on the momentum and energy generated by the Public Design Conference to continue the exchange. We want to keep the conversation alive and share information. Some themes are already forming around common areas of work. For example, a separate group is forming to talk about the public facing website.

This collaboration will change how we work in the future. The opportunity to learn from other design teams in the unique context of policing is a major advantage. It will not only save overall time on work, but by having conversations and helping each other, together we can achieve better results. We are excited and engaged with these possibilities.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Aran Browning, Jonathan Baldwin, Ivo Salters, Ka Yuk Tong, Karen Byskov, Alexandra Langeland, Ariane Epstein, Sally Halls and Sarah Fox.

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https://publicpolicydesign.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/05/comparing-patterns-across-policing/

seen at 14:55, 5 March in Public Policy Design.