AN INTEGRATED SOLUTION FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

The Peoria Police Department is a progressive organization with a staff of over 200 individuals who serve approximately 130,000 residents within an area of over 176 square miles. Optimizing the departments document processing and storage needs has been a operational goal for Peoria.

Within the Records Management Section alone, over 17,000 Incident Reports were processed and filed during an average year and thousands of pages of training and certification records are created and maintained annually.

The Department turned to Impression Technology for assistance in designing and implementing a system that would meet their technical and operational needs while providing a foundation for future growth and enhancement as the staff gained experience with an electronic document management system.

Impression installed and implemented an integrated solution that included iCapture for automated data capture and the indexing of documents and the Alchemy suite of products from Captaris Corporation for image storage, retrieval, viewing and workflow. The figure below provides an illustration of the high level architecture of the solution implemented within the Department.

The Department’s first priority was to simplify the processing, distribution and storage of the thousands of Incident Reports that were created annually. Each Incident Report (IR) was comprised of a folder that could contain multiple types of forms and documents depending on the type of case being handled by the Department. In addition to requiring a secure file room where the IR’s from multiple years were retained based on the established retention schedules, access to this information was time consuming as Officers were required to go to the Records Management Section to check out an IR file for each case that they were assigned to. Within the Records Management Section, multiple copies of selected forms and documents were being made to support the filing of paper documents under various subjects and criteria and hundreds of paper files were constantly being transferred throughout the new facility between the individual Sections, Divisions and Bureaus.

With the implementation of the new Document Management System all IR related forms and documents that are created are immediately scanned by staff in the Records Section. The resulting image files are indexed, with the assigned IR number being one of the primary indexes, or keys, and an electronic folder of the IR is created. The image files are stored as encrypted files within a Storage Area Network (SAN) that is maintained by the IT Department of the City. All of the workstations within the Police Department host an Alchemy Viewing application so that an individual with the proper security clearance and password can access a complete IR folder of document images, or a specific type of document or form within that folder, without the need to leave their desk. In addition to this retrieval capability, the solution includes a workflow component that allows the routing or distribution of folders or documents to selected individuals, Sections, Divisions or Bureaus based on the operational procedures of the Department. This is a very powerful feature as critical files and documents can be ‘staged’ within an In-Box at any location for immediate action by the recipient.

The system that has been implemented provides many benefits to the entire Department. Among the most significant of these are:

• Rapid and convenient access to files and documents that may be critical in the performance of the Departments mission.
• Absolute file security and file integrity; files cannot be misplaced or lost and the access to information conforms with the security policies of the Department.
• Stored information is encrypted, thereby adding additional security for unauthorized access.
• The need to transfer paper files and records throughout the Department has been vastly reduced.
• Duplicate file systems have been eliminated or minimized. Individual documents may be indexed in many ways and the need to store multiple copies of the same document in different files no longer exists.
• The physical space required for the storage of paper files has been drastically reduced.

The initial design and configuration of the solution will allow the Department to significantly expand the use of the system in the future. The Department plans on expanding the system to include all Training and personnel records, the records associated with the Departments accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), Department Standards and Procedures, and Case and Legal files.

If you are interested in learning more about this project, or how Impression Technology can help your organization, please contact Bruce Lechner at 925 280 0010, ext. 20 or email sales@impression-technology.com.