Author: José Herrera

José Herrera
VP of Technology

Managing extra duty is a complex administrative function, requiring police departments to have clearly defined policies and procedures around scheduling, reporting, payment, approvals and communication.

Slip-ups in these procedures can place departments in violation of local, state and federal regulations. Further, there can be serious public relations issues related to extra-duty police officers, their work and their compensation.

In order to manage the complexities, SmartForce™ has a module devoted to extra duty. With SmartForce™, employees can use the Extra Duty module sign up for work outside of normal duty hours offered by approved businesses.

The Extra Duty module contains all the key information required for police departments to manage extra time. In one location, staff can find business owners and their businesses, job coordinators, employees, jobs, pay rates, assignments, and extra duty slips.

Easy workflows

With the Extra Duty module, departments have access to easy-to-use workflows for creating available jobs, selecting and approving jobs, and tracking work after the job is completed.

A staff member managing extra duty can assign roles and control security access within the module. Available roles allow personnel full access, access to jobs and job slips, or view-only access.

After an employee requests a job, approvals are tracked automatically with a status of waiting, approved or denied shown for each approver. When a job is assigned, a job slip is automatically issued. The job slip lets officers report hours worked and include any notes. Again, approvals are tracked and a status field is updatable to show whether an assignment is completed, canceled, invoiced or paid.

Compliant software

With the SmartForce™ Extra Duty module, departments can be confident they are compliant with all applicable requirements. Extra Duty follows best practice principles established by the U.S. Department of Justice for the use and management of extra time.  The module adheres to the requirements set forth for extra duty by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc., (CALEA) as well.

Extra Duty also allows for powerful tracking and analysis. Reporting functionality lets commanders know who is working which extra duty assignments, for whom and where they are. Hours worked and billed by clients are tracked and reportable, showing what monies have been collected and paid to officers and which are outstanding.

From a perception point of view, Extra Duty allows for the fair and equitable selection of extra duty assignments, eliminating internal or external allegations of favoritism. Extra duty time can be reported quickly and accurately upon request from an elected official, a court order, a member of the media or the general public. If there is an incident during extra duty time, the module provides accurate reporting for insurance coverage, legal claims or internal review.

Extra Duty is just one of the modules available in SmartForce™ suite of products. We designed it to minimize the Admin work and allow officer to focus on keeping their communities safe. To learn more about the current and expanding features of SmartForce™ Agency Management Solution (AMS) developed in collaboration with our customer and Agency partners, please visit our site at www.adventos.com.

José Herrera
VP of Technology

We understand that law enforcement is structured by its very nature. It needs to be in order to help these fine hardworking men and women do their important jobs of protecting our communities. This structure is critical to making sure each member is the team if performing his/ her duties to the best of their abilities while meeting the highest standards.

This is all fantastic – however, the natural downside is that it always ends up breaking down in the form of siloes. At Adventos™, our goal is to help you eliminate these siloes within your agency. We do this by embracing the three core values of “Organize,” “Operationalize” and ” Optimize”.

1. Organize – Customer agencies first organize their information, data, and processes.
2. Operationalize – Organizations then look to reduce any duplication, address outstanding needs and streamline processes, data collection, information sharing and permissions.
3. Optimize – Customer agencies finally adapt the solution to bring information to end-users quickly and address their unique needs with configured workflows and dashboards.

By always keeping these three core ideas in mind, we can help remove the siloes that make communication difficult and collaboration complicated. More than anything else, they help with the quick tracking of important information and documents, permitting law enforcement agencies to better serve the public. As an example, our agency management system helps you collaborate internally with targeted information and intelligence that was traditionally passed on in lengthy meetings and now is keep secure online, where is easily searchable and actionable by everyone in the Agency.

We designed SmartForce™ from the ground up to offer features that allow the streamlining of processes, that are specific to law enforcement agencies and designed specifically to reduce Siloes of information by keeping all relevant information available at the right time to the right officers on the right medium, whether is an office PC, car’s computers, Tablet or even Smart Phones.

To learn more about the current and expanding features of SmartForce™ Agency Management Solution (AMS) developed in collaboration with our customer and Agency partners, please visit our site at www.adventos.com.

José Herrera
VP of Technology

Law enforcement agencies around the country are being asked to do a lot more with fewer resources. This means officers must be connected at all times in order to have the latest information and intelligence available to them, whether they are at their desks, in patrol cars or on foot patrol and across all their devices. Technology is supposed to speed up the process and facilitate better, faster and accurate results, not to create confusion and slow down the process.

One question frequently asked by customers and prospective clients is whether the ability of SmartForce™ to adapt to different types of devices is accomplished using an individual application, or app. The answer is no. This function is built directly into the software, giving it many benefits that an individual app can’t provide.

An app is by definition a software program that is developed to function on a specific operating system, for example, Android, Apple’s iOS, and Microsoft Windows, to name the most common. This fact alone limits an apps ability to function across different devices using different operating systems. A developer has to build a different app accomplishing the same thing for each system, and a user has to download a different app for each device. This isn’t an issue when the function is built into the software with the ability to adapt to all of these systems automatically.

Another benefit is providing a similar user experience across different devices. Using a separate app for each operating system renders a different interface on each device, meaning a user has to become familiar with each app to use it efficiently. This can lead to confusion, frustration, and mistakes. Smartforce™ built one solution that works everywhere with a seamless interface for faster adoption rates and ease of use.

Another concern is privacy. Apps often collect information and data without a user being aware of it, potentially sending data to a third party. In the field of public safety, with so much sensitive data involved, it’s an issue that has to be considered. SmartForce™ customers can always be assured that their data is safe and secure. Our Smartforce™ solution is CJIS certified.

We, at Adventos recognize that device adaptability without using apps is the new standard for law enforcement agencies around the globe, as a result we designed this functionality from day one, and has become one of the best features of SmartForce™ giving customers the real-world flexibility they need and expect so they can focus on services their communities.

To learn more about the current and expanding features of Smart Force AMS solution, developed in collaboration with our customer partners, please visit our site at www.adventos.com.

José Herrera
VP of Technology

According to a study that was conducted by IBM in 2015, the average cost of a data breach is currently at an all-time high: $3.8 million dollars. The United States government has recently participated in the creation of a Cybersecurity National Action Plan, also referred to as CNAP. Accompanied by a federal budget increase of $19 billion dollars between now and 2017, this plan emphasizes the importance of investing in an aging federal IT infrastructure on an ongoing basis.

Slow Progress thus far

One of the issues facing the federal government and law enforcement agencies is that while awareness of cybersecurity threats is high, progress towards a secure and modern government is real slow. Many law enforcement agencies in particular still rely on legacy systems that not only fall woefully behind in security practices, but that also leave both government data and the security of our citizens at risk. These factors are now being exacerbated by the widespread use of mobile technologies.

How to create a Safer (Digital) Future

In order to guarantee a safer environment for both law enforcement partners and citizens, a new approach to protection is needed. Biometric logins can help eliminate the need for passwords. Law enforcement partners need to start making an investment in certified cloud services that not only have rights management and encryption capabilities, but also functionality that helps to simplify identity management to make signing into multiple services from any device as secure as possible.

We, at Adventos™ are leveraging Microsoft’s state of the art technologies into our SmartForce™ Agency Management System (AMS) application, so we can speed up the adoption of end to end secure public safety solutions that will not only increase efficiency and communication within any given department, but also will reduce the risk of cybersecurity breaches that put all of us at increased risk.

To find out more information about the Cybersecurity National Action Plan or about the government cybersecurity imperative perspective, visit this helpful resource today.

To learn more about Adventos™ products for public safety  agencies that meets or exceeds security standards, please visit us at www.adventos.com