Category: News

Doug Owens
Director of Implementation

All agencies serving the public must pay extra attention to the security of the computerized systems they use. This is especially true of police agencies. These departments use computers to keep track of evidence, assign cases and tasks to officers, and handle other essential operations. Such types of information need a higher level of protection than general data.

To provide the needed level of security, Adventos hosts its SmartForce system on Microsoft’s Government Cloud. This is a special set of cloud servers that incorporates several top-grade security systems and is compliant with CJIS. In states where a signed information agreement is necessary, Microsoft has signed the Security Addendum of the FBI CJIS Security Policy. This commits Microsoft to meeting the same requirements that public safety and law enforcement agencies are held to. It also means that your agency can prove compliance by using the signed Security Addendum as evidence.

Why Does the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) System Require Such High Security?

This system holds criminal records, fingerprint records, sex offender registrations, and other justice-related information. These sorts of records attract criminal computer activity because they can be used for identity theft, blackmail, and other such information-related crimes. Therefore, the law requires a high amount of computer security for those who handle criminal justice information (CJI). This law applies to cloud service providers and other private contractors as well as law enforcement agencies.

Choosing a CJIS-Compliant Provider Makes Data Security Easy for Your Agency

Setting up a full security system in-house can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. The easiest way to meet all of the requirements is to avoid coding your own system and outsource instead. With SmartForce, you’ll get far more than a security package in return. Your agency will get a fully-ready police agency management system that works on Microsoft’s CJIS-compliant Government Cloud. With the nuts and bolts of security already taken care of, all you need to do to be all set is start using the system.

Are There Any Security Requirements Left for Agencies to Handle?

Basic common sense precautions should be all that are required. Make sure passwords aren’t written down and left in the office, follow good security procedures with any printouts, and make sure to monitor access to your computers. These and other simple measures will help to ensure that your security doesn’t have any obvious openings.

To learn more about Adventos SmartForce, Microsoft’s CJIS compliance, or how everything works together, just contact us, at 303-800-5044. We’ll be glad to explain everything and show you how easy it can be to be completely CJIS compliant.

Doug Owens
Director of Implementation

How does an organization that purchased SmartForce handle Open Records Requests?

SmartForce™ is built on top of the Microsoft SharePoint platform, so clients have access to the eDiscovery (electronic discovery) process to find, preserve, analyze, and package electronic content for a legal request or investigation.

Is our data safe?

Yes. With Office 365, customers own their own data. Legal requests from any government agency are sent directly to the customer and not handled by Microsoft. Microsoft does not provide any access to anyone. To learn more please visit the Office 365 Trust Center.

Is SharePoint really capable of records management?

Yes. SharePoint has significant records management capabilities right out of the box. In Office 365 there are now 1TB site collections and unlimited size tenants, so it can scale to meet an array of records management needs.

What about legal preservation?

While using eDiscovery Center with SharePoint 2013 or Office 365, users are able to capture relevant records managed within the environment and preserve them by specifying SharePoint sites and enabling In-Place Hold. With In-Place Hold enabled, your users can continue to work on their documents with no impact. eDiscovery Center uses the built in SharePoint search to index and search all SharePoint sites and while on premises you can also index and search file shares. You can place your collections from other systems, such as a user’s local computer in SharePoint or a file share, to search your data in one place. The eDiscovery Center can also search and manage holds for Exchange mailboxes. The eDiscovery Center is a type of site collection, just like a Records Center, and is useful not only for legal preservation of records, but also for beneficial FOIA, FOIL, and PDR (Public Disclosure Requests), because you can easily search and export data.

What is the difference between a document library in The Record Center and In Place Records Management?

In Place Records Management requires users to identify key metadata associated with each created record and preserved within a SharePoint site. In a dynamic and collaborative environment, not all items are considered a record. Rather, only the “finished” product is what’s required to be captured in line with the Corporate Retention Policy and Retention Schedule. In other words, you may be capturing items that are not records when implementing in-place records. In Place Records Management allows you to define records within any collaboration and personal sites when the records will be included with other documents. The Records Center is a single location where you can store and manage all your records.

For electronic records, do you require any approvals before disposition/deletion occurs or does that disposition occur automatically, with no human intervention?

SharePoint allows automatic destruction/disposition. However, it is a desired practice to require approvals and reviews before deletion occurs and the possibility of human oversight.

Are there any compatible metadata extractors for scanned documents?

Yes, but not out of the box. Third party solutions exist and they can be customized to be able to identify metadata fields from unique, scanned images. We recommend that a person validates this information before moving items into the SharePoint Records Center.

How is security handled?

With SharePoint 2013, In-Place Hold is not visible to users, so you can preserve content without people even knowing the data is on hold. Only your eDiscovery users who have access to the eDiscovery Center can see what locations are on hold.

A very valuable resource is this eDiscovery FAQ which you can find here.

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.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

Law enforcement agencies and departments implementing a body-worn camera system face a number of operational challenges. From training and compliance to complaint tracking and open records requests, agencies face increasing demands and public pressure.

The SmartForce™ agency management system by Adventos™ addresses these issues to make managing a body-worn camera program easier for officers and office staff alike. Hassle, frustration, and reluctance are reduced with the SmartForce system, which works with any camera hardware system.
Below are the ways the SmartForce agency management system aids agencies.

Policy Compliance

Many agencies struggle with managing the receipt and acknowledgement of body-worn camera policies, audit management, and testing. The Adventos SmartForce system streamlines policy drafting, submissions, auditing, and reporting, so management can focus on policy shaping rather than wondering if officers are in compliance.

Response to Resistance

For too many departments, use of force reporting involves outdated, hand-written forms or legacy internal affairs software systems that are past their prime. SmartForce captures what truly matters in use of force incidents. The system can embed video evidence into a report, create a chronological sequence of events, and handle reporting of multiple officers, parties and witnesses. The software tracks what responses to resistance and de-escalation techniques were used. In tandem with a body-worn camera program, SmartForce is an effective way to track responses to resistance.

Citizen Complaint Tracking

In today’s digital environment, community members can easily record an incident and file a formal complaint. SmartForce allows complaint reports to be routed easily through a chain of command seamlessly and efficiently. Clean and consistent handling of citizen complaints has several advantages. It creates a culture of accountability and improves morale among officers, saves personnel time and money, and boosts public perception of a department.

Training Management

A legacy of paperwork-based processes leads to inefficient management in training academies. Training progress and completion is often submitted and analyzed by hand. With SmartForce, daily observation reports, completion and certification tracking for an entire department is possible. For body-worn camera usage, additional training may be needed and, along with policy compliance, can be tracked using the software.

Video Storage

Body-worn cameras increase the need for agencies to manage an increasing volume of video storage. Some body-worn camera vendors use proprietary, closed platforms. SmartForce runs on the Microsoft Cloud for Government solution and is Criminal Justice Information Services-compliant. SmartForce allows agencies to embed video in response-to-resistance incident or citizen complaint reports. With written reports and video evidence together, tracking and administration is simplified for important information.

Open Records Requests

Coordinating responses to an open records request can be a complicated and overwhelming task. Outdated processes are still commonplace, with manual filing, categorization, retrieval and disclosure reporting. With SmartForce, these processes are streamlined and centralized to ensure timely compliance and adherence to legal requirements.

Public Information Officer

The role of the public information officer (PIO) is growing in importance among law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. PIOs need rapid access to accurate information in real time to meet increasing demands for information and accountability. Never is this need more amplified than in a crisis situation. SmartForce is the only software solution designed to empower PIOs to work with colleagues to collect and distribute information in routine and urgent moments.

The SmartForce™ Agency Management System can be integrated with your current Body Worn Camera hardware in a single platform that is easy to use. See SmartForce™ in action with a free 30 day trial at www.adventos.com.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

Divisions and Units that rarely interact because of shift or physical separation, can now collaborate on crime reduction initiatives and community programs. Why? Because of the advent of efficient Agency Management Systems (AMSs). AMSs save time and reduce duplicated effort in an ever changing environment.

McKinsey & Company estimates the average knowledge worker spends 28 hours per week using email, searching for information, and collaborating. By adopting some collaborative tools available in AMSs, organizations can become up to 25% more efficient and reduce email and the time spent searching for data and documents. That 25% percent increase can easily be achieved with the right technology and culture. Communication and collaboration moves your officers to a higher level of empowerment, transparency, and accountability to achieve your agency’s goals.

The following are points of interest if you’re thinking about implementing an AMS in your agency. Make sure you are ready to manage the change management process by following these tips:

• Show how the tool works quickly, so users can plug and go.
• Choose easy over complex, by starting with the most common processes for users, like patrol replying to threads on crime patterns, problem locations, and neighborhood and traffic issues. Make officers contributors right away, so they will be part of the collaboration and sharing of valuable information.
• Show how the tool solves certain challenges in the agency, like accessing data from multiple databases and getting better crime reduction results during discretionary time.
• How and why the new AMS is more effective than the legacy methods. Push back should be expected, but be ready to explain how much more efficient everyone’s work will be with your new software tool. Take for example a current painful paper process, and then illustrate how efficient it would be to click a few buttons for work to be completed electronically, via AMS.

Interested parties can learn more about the SmartForce™ Agency Management System and how it automates administrative processes associated with law enforcement duties by clicking here. After watching the demo, interested law enforcement officials are invited to click the “Start My Free Trial” button to experience SmartForce, firsthand.