Julie Fryberger
Office of the CEO
With the release of SmartForce™ Version 1.4, Adventos provides law enforcement agencies improved functionality, enhanced officer safety features, system integration, and automation of administrative police department functions. Read entire article here.
A Fusion Center is a place where a group of law enforcement agencies share information. The sharing can include the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. armed forces, the U.S. Department of Justice, other federal agencies, and state and local jurisdictions. Most Fusion Centers—78 in the U.S. as of March 2016—operate at the state or local government level. Every Fusion Center is part of the larger National Network of Fusion Centers, managed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). Federal inter-agency efforts are made to share information and products, conduct training, deploy personnel, and provide connectivity to classified and unclassified systems.
Each Center’s goal is to better identify, investigate, prevent and respond to criminal or terrorist activity.
To identify threats early and prevent incidents from occurring, analysts and other representatives from member agencies poor over data, providing each’s unique perspective and insights. When the Center needs information or needs to share information, each representative serves again as a conduit to his or her agency.
The challenge each Center faces is seamless collection, analysis and distribution of information among member agencies. This can often be a logistically complicated matter, with different systems, data types and procedures among the member agencies. The U.S. Department of Justice published a 100-page guide for agencies on how to establish fusion centers and coordinate information among members.
Fusion Centers are most successful when there is coordinated, rapid information sharing across law enforcement agencies. While Centers enable faster information sharing, they still rely too much on email, which is limiting and which presents security risks. Email is limited in its ability to share information in different formats in a coordinated and organized manner.
When used correctly, Fusion Centers are successful; click here to read the latest Success Stories.
In October 2014, 10 people were arrested in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on charges of manufacturing synthetic narcotics, money laundering, false branding, and conspiracy. The arrests curbed the use of the drug, which is intended to mimic a hallucinogenic in marijuana.
The arrests came about largely due to the coordinated efforts by multiple law enforcement agencies to share data and the keen analysis of that data. It is just one of many successful examples of the power of fusion centers and their ability to collect, share, distribute, and interpret data from myriad sources.
Police work today is increasingly dependent on collaborative efforts by different agencies to leverage the power of data. To gain that significant advantage, agencies need a powerful tool, such as Adventos Corporation’s SmartForce™ agency management system. Such systems allow officers and department leadership to easily share data from various sources, in different formats, in one secure and shared platform.
What are Fusion Centers?
A fusion center is a group of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that work together to collect and share information. The intent is that this inter-agency cooperation helps agencies identify, monitor, investigate, stop, and respond to criminal activity and acts of terrorism.
The list of agencies involved in the 78 fusion centers in operation (as of March 2016) varies by location and purpose, but can include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, various branches of the U.S. armed forces, other federal agencies, and state and local agencies. Typically, fusion centers are managed by local or state governments.
Representatives from the member agencies, often working out of the same central location, act as messengers and communicators. They carry information from their agencies to the fusion centers and share requests for information back to those agencies. They serve to interpret a fusion center’s findings through their agency’s lens and also ensure that critical information learned by the centers is communicated throughout the agencies.
Coordination captures criminals
The 2014 Hampton Roads arrests came about after a large investigation designed to curb the spread of synthetic narcotics, also known as “spice.” The investigation involved a host of partners, including the Virginia Fusion Center, Homeland Security agencies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and state and local law enforcement agencies.
An analyst from the fusion center lead the investigation, using in-depth analysis of collected data to show connections among the people and businesses involved. The multi-agency raid came about with additional support from narcotics investigators from a local regional drug task force.
The power of sharing
Adventos Corp. is committed to supporting the work of fusion centers and other agency collaborations. The SmartForce™ agency management system allows participating agencies a shared virtual workspace. In this space, working on any desktop or mobile device, participating officers can share, store, communicate, extract, analyze, and report on data collected from different systems and in different formats.
SmartForce™ is CJIS-compliant and is a cloud-based enterprise solution using Microsoft’s Government Cloud secure servers.
For agencies eager to tap into the power of collaboration, SmartForce™ provides an enterprise solution that helps officers keep the communities they serve safe and protected. Learn more about SmartForce™ here.
Doug Owens
Director of Implementation
Microsoft’s InfoPath is an incredibly powerful tool that businesses all of the world on a daily basis use for the purposes of designing, distributing, completing and submitting electronic forms using structured data. At Adventos, we notice that many of our clients love and rely on it because of the freedom it provides – they can create ANY form built from the ground up to address the needs of a particular workflow, period.
Unfortunately, Microsoft currently has an “InfoPath Problem” which means that our customers do, too.
What’s Going on with InfoPath?
At the end of January 2014, Microsoft made an announcement that shocked many: InfoPath was in the process of going away. This was always intended to be a long process – the company first announced that support would end in April of 2023, before finally extending it to 2026. While support for InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 will continue until that time, it still creates a long-term problem that many businesses need to address before that date on the calendar arrives.
As a replacement for InfoPath, Microsoft is currently developing a cross-platform solution that is designed to offer the same form creation functionality in a brand new way. Microsoft also indicated that InfoPath Forms Services will both be included in the next on-site release of SharePoint Server 2016 and will continue to be supported by Office 365 indefinitely.
The Adventos Approach
At Adventos, we understand that it is the creation of forms and workflows – not InfoPath itself – that law enforcement agencies need. While we pledge to continue to support these ideas and will provide customers with feature rich solutions that help accomplish these goals, we cannot in good faith continue to support a technology in Microsoft that will soon go away – even if that date is still a decade in the future.
Furthermore, Adventos has long experienced issues with InfoPath and data migration. When law enforcement agencies depend on forms and workflows to help do their jobs and protect our communities on a daily basis, we ultimately decided that it doesn’t make sense to continue to rely on InfoPath if it makes these tasks harder, not easier.
SmartForce
As with most of our decisions, Adventos pledges to use the SmartForce agency management system as our primary means of supporting our customers. We understand just how important the types of custom forms created in InfoPath are to you, which is why we continually work to provide our own in-house solutions to address these goals.
If your law enforcement agency is in need of a configured workflow to help you and your officers more effectively do your jobs, we will build it. If you need to be able to quickly create a data list, we’ll teach you how. Anything InfoPath can do SmartForce can do and you’ll also have the added benefit of continued support on a permanent basis – something Microsoft has clearly stated will not be possible.
While we at Adventos fully acknowledge that InfoPath is an incredibly powerful tool that has brought with it a number of benefits for law enforcement agencies, its days are officially numbered. By focusing on the adoption of SmartForce capabilities and using the workflow and functionality it provides, we believe that you’ll find the gap left behind when Microsoft stops supporting InfoPath isn’t nearly as big as you may have been led to believe.
To find out more information about InfoPath form support and similar functionality with Adventos and SmartForce, please click here.
Jared Rose
VP of Sales
At Adventos, one of the most common questions that we see IT departments and law enforcement agencies face time and again comes down to whether to build an on premise infrastructure or go with a cloud-based solution for all of their agency management system needs. While both have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages, the true answer to this question requires you to take a deeper look at the specifics of your own organizational objectives and needs to help guarantee you’ll have the service you need when you need it the most. The good news is that SmartForce runs both on premise and on the cloud
Security and Compliance
One of the major benefits that a cloud-based solution has over an on-premise alternative is one of security and compliance. According to a study recently conducted by IJIS, companies that used cloud-based solutions had 45% fewer incidents of data loss, 45% less security-related downtime and a staggering 93% fewer audit deficiencies – all of which are hugely important qualities for law enforcement agencies in particular.
None of this is to say that there is a “one size fits all” answer to this particular question. For some, an on-premise solution will be the only way to guarantee the level of control over their data and processes that they need on a daily basis. For many others, however, a cloud-based solution is the single best way to control costs, guarantee scalability, security and compliance and deploy as quickly and as efficiently as possible
Time to Deploy
Picking the right solution is one thing – getting that solution up and running across an agency is something else entirely. Setting up your own on-premise infrastructure allows you to maintain complete control over your environment, but it also takes time. If the time to deploy for an in-house solution is a month, you’re looking at a months of salaries for IT employees, two months of overtime when issues arise or when things don’t go as expected, etc. With a cloud-based solution, you have none of these concerns – an agency management system like SmartForce can typically be deployed in a manner of hours, not months, and can then be further customized to fit the precise way you like to work.
Maintenance and Upgrades
Many people don’t realize until it’s far too late that when they decide to set up their own on-premise solution, there is a large amount of responsibility that comes with the control they’re trying to hold onto. This most commonly takes the form of maintenance and upgrades. If something goes wrong, you need to fix it – or find the person who can and schedule their service. If something needs to be upgraded, it isn’t going to happen automatically – you need to find the right person to get the job done, which means labor costs, downtime and more.
With a cloud-based solution, however, regular upgrades are built into the cost of the solution in the first place. You don’t have to worry about updating as much as a single piece of software – as everything is delivered in an on-demand capacity, you always have access to the latest tools at all times. Maintenance and upgrades aren’t just easier – they’re literally things you don’t have to worry about any longer.
Scalability
One of the most important qualities that law enforcement agencies need to consider when deciding between cloud vs. on-premise solutions is one of scalability. Always having access to the resources you need when you need them is key to operational success, but the reverse is also true: paying too much for resources you aren’t effectively utilizing is one of the most efficient ways to waste money today.
Cloud-based solutions like SmartForce are inherently scalable as storage, processing and other requirements are served up in an on-demand manner. Essentially, you’re paying one fixed price for whatever you need, whenever you need it.
Costs
This was purposely listed last. After careful consideration of the first four factors and your particular agency and goals you are in the best place to determine the true cost of deploying the solution on-premise or via the cloud.
Parties interested in the SmartForce™ Agency Management System and how it improves intelligence and community collaboration, click here. After watching the demo video, you are invited to request a free trial of the agency management system to try for yourselves.
Business meetings are essential for promoting teamwork, but they need to provide high value in order to keep participants engaged. A high-value meeting involves concise, effective communications, keeps the attention of attendees, and is free of distracting behavior. It’s easy to foster the right environment by following these simple steps:
When meetings are set up properly, they are impactful, motivating, and useful. Participants will be energized and focused, while organizers will make efficient strides towards the goals of their meetings. Implement these steps to improve your meetings today and get everyone on board.
Parties interested in the SmartForce™ Agency Management System and how it improves intelligence and community collaboration, click here. After watching the demo video, you are invited to request a free trial of the agency management system to try for yourselves.
With some law enforcement agencies using Pinterest to post mug shots, Twitter to send out crime alerts and Facebook and NextDoor to reach out to the general public, public safety organizations are recognizing the value of the easy community connections and communication that can come with social media. Traditional social media channels, however, are not without their risks.
An FBI bulletin discussing Social Media and Law Enforcement outlined several potential hazards police may face when using social media platforms. These include public access to employees’ personal information, malicious online attacks, lax comment moderation, and the cloak of anonymity that gives people free reign to post whatever they wish with no fear of repercussions.
An ideal solution would be to preserve all the benefits of social media while eradicating the risks. And that’s exactly what SmartForce did with its Community Collaboration module.
Community Collaboration Module Ready for Action
The Community Collaboration module is part of the SmartForce platform and included with your subscription. The biggest benefit, by far, is the overall ease with which you can reach out, connect, establish and improve relationships with your local community partners.
The faster you get started with the module, the more quickly you’ll see how it can help your agency become smarter and more efficient with both crime reduction and community relations.
Connections and Collaboration
SmartForce lets your law enforcement agency enjoy a secure, two-way conversation with anyone else your agency authorizes to enter the forum. Your agency can then confidently connect with and collaborate on a wide range of projects and issues, sharing:
In addition to sharing specific knowledge, your agency and others in the forum can securely open discussions on topics pertinent to safety, security and of overall importance to the community.
Fortified Forum
While the module is similar to social media channels by allowing for the rapid dissemination of information and sharing, it’s drastically different in the way of security. Traditional social media channels are often open to the general public, with no control over who can view and contribute information.
Even when you set up specific privacy settings within social media channels, there is no guarantee that the information you’re sharing can’t be unlawfully accessed by uninvited parties. The risk that your accounts can be hacked is also greater.
That’s not the case with the SmartForce module. As with all features within the platform, stringent security measures are in place to ensure the information is only accessible by those authorized to view it. Rather than an open arena for the general public, the module functions more like a secure meeting room open by invitation only.
And law enforcement agencies are welcome to invite whomever they choose to join the forum. Secure connections, discussions and collaborations can be established and maintained with:
Posting questions and opening discussions with community groups can transition from conversations online to targeted patrols on the street. Headquarters can use the gathered information to drive proactive patrol where issues are located, with enforcement beefed up by foot patrols, DUI enforcement zones or other tactics as needed.
The Community Collaboration module can additionally be used as a way to:
Enhanced community collaboration that results in smarter and more efficient policing is only a few mouse clicks away on your SmartForce platform. Get started now.
Doug Owens
Director of Implementation
For Law Enforcement, the word “security” is taking on new meaning.
Today, security is as much about protecting information as it is about traditional policing definitions.
With an increasing amount of Law Enforcement information being stored in the cloud, department and public leaders are understandably concerned that the data is secure and protected.
With the SmartForce™ agency management system, you can be confident that your department’s vital data and documents are safe, secure, and compliant. Our commitment to security and protection of customer data is paramount, and SmartForce™ is fully compliant with federal data security regulations.
The need for security
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division issued updates to its security policy in October 2015. Also in 2015 the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) issued its own guidelines recommending the use of cloud computing resources. The 12 IACP principles in short, are:
Remaining compliant
At Adventos, we take the issue of security compliance seriously. Our SmartForce™ agency management system runs on the Microsoft Government Cloud, a set of servers that is CJIS-compliant and has additional security features. In addition, Microsoft has signed the FBI CJIS Security Policy in more than 25 states (and the number is growing) that require information agreements. Finally, our contractual agreement includes Microsoft’s attestation to compliance with the CJIS guidelines.
As a company, we take several other steps to ensure that the data of customer agencies is secure. For example, we do not keep CJI on site. All employees are required to complete training on CJI and background screening is done on those employees with access to CJI.
We understand Law Enforcement’s need to keep and maintain the trust of the communities they serve. With SmartForce™, Law Enforcement can be confident that the data they store is protected, compliant and secure.
Doug Owens
Director of Implementation
Smartphones are being handed out to officers to enable them to work smarter and safer while policing our streets. Using smartphone technology is not new but the issue of departments lacking a strategy for implementation is widespread. Pilot programs are long over and yet officers and departments are not aware of the full capabilities of smartphones. Consider these elements as smartphones strategies are revamped in police departments.
1. Improve Communication and Officer Safety with Life-saving Apps.
Smartphone applications, such as those through SmartForce™, connect public safety agencies internally and to the community at large. Applications can make it easier and faster for officers on the streets to get the information that they need. The New York Times wrote on the smartphone initiative in Harlem. Officer Tom Donaldson was able to type in a street address in a housing project and pull up names of every resident with an open warrant, arrest record and police summons, apartments with prior domestic incident reports, residents with applicable orders of protection, registered gun owners, and arrest photographs of all parolees in the building. This information will provide valuable intelligence and will help officers be more prepared when dealing with subjects on a daily basis. Detailed SmartForce™ apps offers higher-level intelligence to agencies that is user-friendly and potentially life-saving.
2. Enable Roll-Call Pass-On.
One of the first features to be made available within the SmartForce™ Agency Management System, is used to improve internal communications, such as sharing vital information to the team (Bulletins and be on the lookout, photos and video) in memorable ways, assigning accountability for activities, and spending more time on decision-making and tactical strategy during meetings. All of these electronic entries are searchable and can be filtered for robust reporting.
3. Focus on Agency and Community Collaboration.
An Agency Management System (AMS), is a secure environment created to foster a real-time, two-way culture of information exchange within the department and with the community at large. Possible ways to implement AMS include:
There is a huge push towards information-sharing with the public and SmartForce™ complements local crime enforcement efforts. Providing officers with a secure platform to contribute within a collaborative communication platform can be a major factor in achieving up to a 25% increase in productivity and engagement. Departments control the type and level of information-sharing available on the SmartForce™ Agency Management System.
4. Help with Body Worn Camera Programs.
An AMS system helps departments implement the Body Worn Camera Program with a streamlined management system of policy drafting, submissions, auditing, and reports. SmartForce™ is capable of including video evidence and uses temporal sequencing technology to record events in a Use of Force report. It highlights effective responses and de-escalation techniques used during an incident. In addition, citizen complaint tracking, training management, video storage, open records requests, and Public Information Officers are supported with the software solution presented by SmartForce™.
Smartphones and a tailored SmartForce™ AMS system enable collaboration and compliance within the department and outreach to communities. Find out more about a FREE trial at www.adventos.com.
Brian Mc Grew
VP of Education
We live in an age where the volume of data available to us has amassed to such a degree that it presents a unique set of challenges for law enforcement. When dealing with the huge volumes of data, getting the RIGHT information to the RIGHT people as quickly as possible can be a huge undertaking on the best of days. On top of this, the speed at which our environment demands, makes real-time information sharing extremely important and valuable. Many challenging decisions must be made without having all the information needed so having the most up-to-date data plays a huge role in the outcomes of decisions that must be made.
Most law enforcement agencies have multiple data bases and personal email folders they are using to store the volumes of data they are receiving and producing. Since data is housed in disparate data bases and folders, it is very challenging and time consuming to search and access the relevant data that needs to be a part of critical decision-making. From this information overload problem, a solution has emerged that is quickly proving to be an important addition to law enforcement’s arsenal for making communities safer and better places to live.
Illustrating the Challenges of a Big Data World
To understand just how difficult managing massive volumes of data can be, consider the example of a Special Operations Task Force fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. In the “Situational Awareness Room” you essentially have a perfect visual metaphor for big data – a dozen flat screen televisions, each with their own live feed of some far off location, rooms equipped with communications equipment constantly bringing in new pieces of intelligence, and data and information portals providing updates and “need to know” information that changes by the minute.
How do you cut through all the noise and find what you’re really looking for? How do you keep organized and manage the various moving parts of a fluid situation while it is in the process of unfolding? How do you process this data to make not just a decision, but the most appropriate decision to positively alter outcomes vs. just reacting?
Big Data and Law Enforcement
One agency that is paving the way in terms of both crime prevention and reduction through real-time information sharing and the human factor is the Port St. Lucie Police Department. Here, a team of crime analysts, agency leaders, detectives, and patrol officers fuse information into a centralized forum to contextualize and prioritize incoming crime data. They organize the crime information into patterns, problem locations, major crime, and neighborhood/traffic that they are focused on preventing or reducing during un-committed time. Crime bulletins are crafted to contain the right amount of information and context. Agency leaders decide on which responses to employ based on severity of crime. Detectives, patrol districts, and specialty units are sent information in a targeted manner where it goes to the specific groups of individuals that are best suited to act on it.
Once new information emerges or the context of that data changes, their crime analysts snap into action. They post in real-time updated crime analysis products in their secure SmartForce™ agency management system for the necessary personnel to review. Officers are no longer drowning in emails, but empowered with real-time information targeted to their beats and roles. All police personnel involved in the response see and participate in real-time data sharing and problem solving activities in an organized forum. Information and activity does not fall between the cracks, rather it is collaborated on through the human factor and more speed is achieved in clearing cases, finding missing persons, and resolving “hot-spots.”
The SmartForce™ Approach
The SmartForce™ agency management system allows an agency to organize the massive volume of information, target the information to those who need it most, and facilitate the human factor of real-time dialogue of emerging information and intelligence to speed the achievement of an agency’s crime prevention and reduction goals. What is even more impressive about this agency management system is that it is housed in a CJIS compliant environment and can be used on any mobile device whether in a patrol car, on a smartphone, or back at the station.
We know that technology does not prevent or reduce crime, officers do. SmartForce™ compliments your CAD, RMS, and analytics tools. But the real magic with the SmartForce™ approach is that it combines the human factor in your agency with easily accessed critical data for higher levels of public safety.
For more information or to get a FREE 30 day trial of SmartForce™ contact us at 303-800-5044 or visit our website at www.adventos.com.
