Have you ever watched some of those live-drama, police operation documentaries or films back in the 1980’s, 1990’s and early 2000, where in a scene you find a cop tagging the owner of a vehicle and identifying a criminal merely by punching an ID on a hand-held unit or a small computer system mounted in the police car?
Back then, it may have seemed like a leap in technological prowess for the law enforcement agencies. The shocking truth, however, is that the system that facilitated the flow of information from State Law Enforcement offices to the police units in the field was probably dependent on aging programs that were developed decades earlier.
Before choosing to modernize these aging systems, police and military agencies kept different records (both paper and digital) for known offenders, convicted felons, including data on juveniles and those on parole. Eventually the systems give rise to a potential risk that, if left unchecked and mishandled, questions are raised concerning the accuracy and the duplication of unorganized data, questions that could ultimately affect civilian security activities and public safety, in the long run.
The solution - modernize those legacy systems.
Today, some of these obsolete or legacy systems integration have been given an overhaul, and have been modernized for more robust integration with other state agency information systems, which includes the correlation of data from prison institutions, parole and even the justice department and courts systems, as well as revenue systems and social services; all-in-all to offer a faster, more accessible, and more accurate sharing of information for police units, to better serve and protect the public.
In a push for developing a more comprehensive system for law protection agencies and the justice department, IT personnel from different states have started drafting plans to modernize the other sectors in the police and military departments that would allow:
1. Faster and more accurate web-interface and cross-referencing of offender management systems.
2. On-demand accessibility and global sharing of important security data.
3. Disaster recovery and more secure offsite-backups with 99.9% availability or better, 24/7.
4. Active user groups and better channels for police units to report and for citizens to read on important information from their local security agencies.
5. Cost-effective solutions to upgrade and maintain new systems, after modernizing them.
This new tactical and strategic approach will help facilitate information not only on past or current offender data, but will also provide crucial details on all the interactions of offenders with State government agencies, upon demand. The old systems are simply too difficult to interface well with one another.
Modernizing legacy applications is a fast and proven method to making sure you keep the critical data from your existing system, while reaping the benefits and savings of a newer and more modern system. Law Enforcement Agencies who have done so have certainly benefited from these efforts.