City of Boise, ID
Project Overview
The Boise Police Department (BPD) engaged DELTAWRX to assess its technology portfolio and develop a five-year strategic technology plan that would allow the department to leverage technology to fully achieve desired operational goals and improve the efficiency of agency staff. After developing the strategic technology plan, BPD extended the scope to include documenting business processes, identifying business needs and developing functional specifications for technology to support:
Police records management
Public records requests
Personnel records
Training management
Equipment and asset management
Digital evidence
Internal affairs
Client Profile
About 300 sworn and 100 non-sworn BPD serve the 525,000 residents of Boise, which is part of a larger metropolitan area with a population of over 700,000. Ada County Sheriff’s Office dispatches BPD and the two agencies shared core technology supporting dispatching and records management operations.
Client Challenges
BPD’s approach to acquiring technology over the years had resulted in a fragmented technology portfolio that was compromising the department’s ability to fully achieve its desired operational goals. Its technology portfolio reduced the efficiency and effectiveness of its staff and often hindered, rather than supported, operations.
The portfolio included custom and aging applications with multiple overlapping data stores that required duplicative data entry, including on paper forms. Information was siloed and difficult to find and analyze, frequently because it is stored in scanned PDF files. Users had little confidence in aggregate reports due to issues with the quality and accessibility of department data. Additionally, the City’s Information Technology Department (ITD) found it challenging to support all BPD’s applications.
DELTAWRX Solutions
The strategic plan focused on aligning technology and operations. We emphasized leveraging existing technology as much as possible and recommended purchasing new technology only to fill in gaps. We also stressed integrating technology as much as possible to limit the number of data stores and avoid overlapping functionality across applications.
To prepare BPD for the organizational changes that would occur upon plan implementation, DELTAWRX documented and analyzed business processes, identifying change points and potential future processes. We used this information to identify business needs and then developed functional specifications that could be used to purchase, configure and test new technology.
Benefit to Client
BPD was able to use the strategic plan and other project documentation to develop budgets for the various technology acquisitions and prioritize initiatives to develop a realistic timeline for implementing the strategic plan. The project documentation positioned BPD so that when funding became available, it could streamline the procurement processes and be ready to implement and test new systems.