Author: The SmartForce® Team

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

We need Solutions designed exclusively for Law Enforcement Agencies.

I have seen solutions for Law Enforcement agencies that can take several months to implement and require an army of full-time resources to test and deploy such solutions. This is a fundamental problem in the industry were solution designed and gear to the private sector and now being pushed to Law Enforcement Agencies compounding the resource problem every agency has to some degree.

Solutions created with the private sectors in mind just do not work well for Law Enforcement Agencies, whose primary goal is to keep their communities safe. They have very serious resource constraint and that last thing a police chief or Sheriff wants to do is to devote precious resources to administration duties. This has been a very important contributing factor in the “technological gap” between the private sector and Law Enforcement Agencies.

The solution: SmartForce™

At its core, SmartForce was built to be the secure, cloud-based solution specifically designed for Law Enforcement Agencies. We purposely build our solution with no hardware investment and little training required. It was designed to be the most user-friendly platform possible, putting multiple tools, features, and functions right at every officer’s fingertips via a central homepage that gives them access to mission critical functionality like:

• The latest crime bulletins, analysis, and intelligence
• Complaint and Commendations
• Response to resistance
• Community collaboration
• Previous shift update
• Compliance Management
• Administrative tasks
• Discussion threads
• Extra Duty
• Links to pertinent reports

Our Secret Sauce:

All these functionalities have been pre-built in our solution so when the time comes to implement it in your agency, we can have Agencies of any size up and running in a matter of days, our Smartforce™ is fully configurable to meet the needs of each Law Enforcement Agency in a fast and comprehensive way.

Our training has been designed to be hands on and teach each member of the agency what he or she needs, nothing more and nothing less. We have a long history of servicing Law Enforcement Agencies and we know their primary duty is to keep us safe not to sit on long meaningless training sessions or mastering useless technology.

After a very short deployment and training session, officers and commanders alike will be able to focus all their energy on securing our communities using state of the art technology that has been created exclusively for Law Enforcement Agencies.

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.

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

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.

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

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.

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

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.

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

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

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

You’ve all heard of CAD and RMS and know they are integral systems for operating a law enforcement organization.  However, in today’s policing a new system is required.  The third leg of the Police “3-Legged Stool” is an Agency Management System (AMS).  Thankfully this third system does not come with the same price tag or require the intense resource allocation of CAD and RMS, but it is equally integral to operating in an environment of ever increasing demands that outpace government budgets.

Why Do I Need an Agency Management System?

With today’s increased demands and expectations on law enforcement agencies, gone are the days of just responding to calls for service and writing reports.  Therefore, a third software solution is required in addition to CAD and RMS systems.  In general, Agency Management Systems (AMS) enable quicker search and access to critical data, targeted information sharing, user-friendly electronic workflows, and facilitate collaboration so key initiatives and group problem solving are accomplished more efficiently.  SmartForce™ is a unique AMS since it is law enforcement specific, meets the Criminal Justice Information Services Division’s strict standards for security, and allows for internal and external collaboration.  Other off-the-shelf systems do not meet this criteria, are not designed to account for today’s evidence-based law enforcement complexities or workflows, and provide limited information-sharing features.

What Makes SmartForce™ So Great?

The SmartForce™ Agency Management System (AMS) enables law enforcement agencies to manage their ever increasing amount of data and complex departmental functions more accurately and efficiently, as well as improve intelligence-led and community-policing strategies.

Best of all, SmartForce™ was designed for officers—to be user friendly and secure—with input from more than 300 public safety customers. Today, we have customers from coast to coast ranging from small to large market police departments, sheriffs’ offices, and even a gang and intelligence fusion center all using SmartForce™ and continuing to provide us feedback on how it can make their jobs easier and provide greater levels of public safety.

Let’s face it…you’re constantly called to do more with less. SmartForce’s technology does more by helping your agency work Smarter! Positive outcomes of our SmartForce™ AMS include:

• Better execution of crime reduction and prevention strategies
• More efficient management of community-policing efforts during uncommitted patrol time
• More procedural justice transparency and quicker reporting for command staff, elected officials, the general public, or media
• Faster communication of incident details to officers, particularly in life-or-death situations
• Better management and reporting of high liability concerns like use-of-force and complaints
• More automated administrative processes (e.g., tasks, shift change assignments, document management), enabling more uncommitted time
• Easier management of training, compliance, and reporting workflows
• More collaboration with neighboring agencies and community partners

Other Agency-relevant considerations that guided Adventos’ development of SmartForce™ include:

• A mobile-friendly design enabling ease-of-use on desktop computers, MDC’s, tablets, and smartphones
• New hardware isn’t needed
• An intuitive design for all levels of sophistication and agency sizes
• Quick and effective training

Meaningful Intelligence Sharing

Availability — Information sharing isn’t enough. Information needs to be shared to the right people, with the right priority…instantly. Information must also be found quickly with a deep search engine that can even dig through pdf’s, video, and audio files.  Available information is the only valuable and actionable information.  Email fails to meet these criteria.  SmartForce™ ensures law enforcement personnel can access and share the critical information they need, when they need it.

Internal Group Problem Solving — SmartForce™ helps agency groups solve problems by providing easy access to relevant data as well as real-time discussion threads and bulletin boards to collaborate and complete projects together in a faster period of time.

Community Group Engagement — SmartForce™ lets community groups and local businesses share content like building blueprints, surveillance video, photos, and crime prevention strategies; engage in real-time discussions; and post questions and answers among key organizational leaders, task forces, and other agencies. Business owners, schools, HOAs, churches, and other community partners that have used these features report immediate and improved feelings of security and a better connection to law enforcement agencies.

Security

SmartForce™ enables departments to set permissions and security features for specific job functions from sworn to non-sworn in regard to criminal investigations, situational awareness, and administrative tasks.

SmartForce™ is hosted in Microsoft’s Government Cloud, so mission-critical data is secured in a CJIS compliant environment, and always accessible. In states where a signed information agreement is necessary, Microsoft has signed the Security Addendum of the FBI CJIS Security Policy which requires Microsoft to meet the same requirements public safety and law enforcement agencies are held to. It also means your agency can prove compliance by using the signed Security Addendum as evidence.

Mobility First

SmartForce™ reduces unnecessary administrative and travel time for officers in the field. Many functions previously requiring administrative extra steps and travel are easily and securely performed in SmartForce™, from anywhere.  For example, officers returning from off-duty can be caught up immediately by scanning the SmartForce™ shift briefing board from their smartphones and there is no need to burn DVD’s of video/photo evidence to be couriered to the District Attorney’s office during case preparation for court proceedings.

Most Popular SmartForce™ Features

Information and Intelligence Collaboration

• Roll-Call/Shift Briefing Bulletin Boards
• CJIS compliant Bulletin Dissemination
• Real-Time Criminal Intelligence
• Officer Safety Intelligence
• Discussion Threads to collaborate on pattern crimes, problem locations, major crimes and neighborhood/traffic
• Photo, Video, Bulletin, and Warrant Libraries
• Assigned Problems Manager
• Alerts and Announcements Manager
• Community Bulletin Board

Body Worn Camera and High Liability Management

• Response to Resistance Reporting
• Complaints and Commendations Reporting
• Compliance Management
• Training Officer Management (FTO, PTO, or Modified)
• Public Information Officer
• Video Library Management

Community Collaboration

• Community Partner Access Sites for Neighborhood Watch, Schools, Business Watch, Task Forces, etc.
• Community Leaders Discussion Forum
• Community Request Management
• Activity/Initiative Management
• Community Policing Outreach

Administrative Streamlining

• Legal, Policy, and Training Acknowledgement
• Document Management
• Calendar Management
• Forms Library
• Policy Library
• Inventory or Quartermaster Management
• Extra-Duty
• Public Safety and Community Directory
• Absence and Vacation Tracking, including approval workflows

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

In just a few short years, computers have revolutionized nearly every industry and activity including crime analysis. There are a number of key ways in which computer technology has made it easier for law enforcement to do its job and to better execute policing strategies for crime prevention and reduction that keep our communities safer and more secure for generations to come.

Agency Management

An agency management system is important not only for crime analysis, but for law enforcement as a whole. With a police agency management system, disparate data bases and redundant procedures can be eliminated, efficiency increased, and costs kept under control. These systems make it easy to manage official communication, streamline administrative processes and improve crime reduction efforts.

Crime Analysis

Analyzing crimes and understanding where crime is likely to happen in the future requires a variety of computerized tools and programs to determine likely repeat suspects and other crucial details. Data from computer aided dispatch (CAD) and records management systems (RMS) is compiled using crime analysis software which can make it easy to analyze trends, generate graphs and heat maps.

Geographic Analysis

Analyzing geographic information is essential for analyzing and predicting crime. This data includes maps of the locations of sex offenders, parolees, probationers, and other persons of interest to law enforcement. Many agencies handle this through a program called Geographic Information Systems, or GIS.

Communicating Crime Analysis Information

Because crime analysis generates a plethora of records and crime bulletins, organizing and disseminating them efficiently to the right audiences in a CJIS compliant environment is an essential part of the job. Analysts combine common suites like Microsoft Office with sophisticated programs such as SmartForce™ for targeted information sharing, accountability, and CJIS security that simply can’t be accomplished or sustained through email.

Social Media

For police agencies, going onto sites like Facebook and Twitter isn’t time-wasting like it might be for the rest of us. Many criminals have given themselves away by posting evidence of themselves committing or planning to commit crimes as well as associating themselves with other persons of interest, which makes keeping a watchful eye on these sites of paramount importance. Law enforcement agencies make sure that their officers are also online searching social media so that when these things happen, cases can be cleared more efficiently.

These are just a few of the many ways in which technology is changing the crime analysis playing field. If you’d like to find out more information about how upgrading your technology systems will help your crime analysis, prevention, and reduction efforts as well as other essential aspects of your operations, please don’t hesitate to contact us today, 303-800-5044.

The SmartForce® Team
SmartForce Technologies Inc.

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.