Pennsylvania State Police Cuffs Runaway Information Management
Snapshot
| Organization The Pennsylvania State Police. |
| The Challenge Eliminate manual activities associated with two different reporting processes: one for uniform crime reporting and the other for pursuit reporting. |
| The Strategy Create a Web-based system that allows local police departments to file crime reports to the Pennsylvania State Police electronically and provides citizens with immediate access to crime information. |
| The Results The first-of-its-kind Uniform Crime Reporting Web site eliminates manual processes, reduces costs, assists in strategic planning, and improves data integrity. New pursuit reporting system eliminates hundreds of hours spent on manual report activities while delivering accurate statistics online. |
| Information Builders Solution Creation of the Workflow Management System, which allows loan officers to manage, prioritize, and measure new mortgages by producing task lists, distributed to employees, while tracking status |
| Information Builders Solution WebFOCUS, Consulting. |
When the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted in 1966, it was largely based on the premise that openness in government will assist citizens in making the informed choices necessary to sustain a democracy. Today, Internet technology has provided the basis for fulfilling the spirit of the original FOIA by making a tremendous amount of judicial and law enforcement information available to the public – all while simplifying administrative processes for government agencies.
For example, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) has deployed a Web portal for automating two resource-intensive administrative tasks: the collection and reporting of crime information and the tracking of police pursuits. Built by EDS and Information Builders' Consulting, the Web portal (http://ucr.psp.state.pa.us) represents the first Internet-based self-service application of its type in the country.
"The new system eliminates a lot of manual processes," confirms Paul Evanko, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner. "It provides instant access to state crime data and improves the accuracy of that data. This helps local police forces fight crime more effectively while giving citizens immediate access to crime statistics."
Modernizing the Good Fight
The Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program was originally created in 1970 to provide government leaders and criminal justice professionals with information about the incidence of crime. Local police departments are required to submit crime-incidence information to PSP, which submits the information to the FBI in a specific format. Local and state police departments must also file law enforcement employee information.
Until recently, local police departments gathered crime data monthly and mailed it to PSP, which manually entered the information into a computer program. When errors were detected, PSP had to mail the information back to the departments for corrections.
Motivated by the vast communication capabilities of the Internet, the Pennsylvania State Police realized that the program was due for an upgrade. "We needed a better crime-reporting system," says Evanko. "Our old methods were labor-intensive, error-prone, and inflexible. We wanted to move to an Internet-based system that could give us more reporting options."
The system had to be secure enough to guard against human error and easily connect with each reporting agency – as well as the FBI UCR program. The department enlisted WebFOCUS because of its ease of use, scalability, comprehensive security architecture, and ability to connect to a wide range of data sources.
Meeting the Needs of Government
Using an integrated project team, EDS and Information Builders' Consulting partnered to produce the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System. The Web-based system enables local police departments to file crime reports to PSP electronically and makes crime information instantly available to the public.
"Local police departments can now enter the UCR data directly into a PSP database via the Internet," Evanko explains. "If an error is detected, the database automatically notifies the department and requires that it be corrected before the information is accepted." The system also generates formatted data for submission to the FBI, along with an annual submission of Law Enforcement Employee Information document.
The user-friendly menu system and data-entry screens simplify the process of learning and using the application. "The system guides users step-by-step through the submission process," Evanko explains. "More than 2,000 police jurisdictions in Pennsylvania now have the ability to enter required FBI information using a simple Web browser."
In addition to the data-entry guides, the system includes online help, real-time editing, and downloadable FBI forms. "The ease-of-use and increased availability have encouraged many agencies that did not previously report UCR statistics to start using the new system," Evanko adds.
In the Interest of Public Safety
Prior to the implementation of the new reporting system, information submitted by the local departments was not available to the public until PSP published the Uniform Crime Report once a year. Now citizens can go to the reporting area of the Web site, developed by Information Builders' Consulting, and view the data as soon as it is submitted. Since its launch on the Web, the UCR system has received more than 6.4 million hits at an average rate of 10,147 per day.
WebFOCUS allows police department personnel and private citizens to create their own queries to access specific crime information by department, by county, or statewide using a Web browser. The system retains five years of crime information online and allows citizens to create comprehensive queries and receive the results immediately. Previously, PSP personnel received requests from citizens, research agencies, and other groups to provide this type of statistical data. Fulfilling these requests for information was an extremely time-consuming activity. Users now have the option to select from more than 30 types of offenses, generate reports, and analyze statistics in a variety of categories, all of which provide a whole new dimension to the concept of public safety.
"The new system gives police departments and the public the opportunity to use the Web to check crime in their own neighborhoods," says PSP Lt. Wes Thurston, project manager for the Web system.
Information Builders' consultants developed fixed-format reports that are used for standard summary UCR and administrative reporting, while an ad hoc query facility lets users specify the report format, reporting period, and sort order. Some users make use of the data for more complex analysis, using online analytical processing (OLAP) tools.
"The system goes far beyond simple query and reporting," Thurston adds. "Result files can be easily imported to other tools for further analysis. The consulting engagement with Information Builders has been a real asset to us."
The biggest boon for department administrators comes with creating the annual Uniform Crime Report. This massive report was previously compiled manually from individual mainframe reports and printed in book form – a process that took months to produce and was a major headache for the department's staff. Now this annual report is generated automatically by WebFOCUS in Adobe PDF format. It is then posted to the Pennsylvania State Police Web site, where it can be downloaded and printed. This reduces administrative costs dramatically. "The system certainly saves time and the reports it generates through predetermined parameters work very well," Thurston says.
Pursuing New Report Activities
Soon after the Uniform Crime Reporting system was completed, PSP used the same Web infrastructure to create a self-service reporting system that automates pursuit reporting. The Pennsylvania Vehicle Code requires police departments in Pennsylvania to make a record of all vehicle pursuits and report them to PSP. The detailed information collected from these reports is used to validate or refute the merits of pursuit policies and apprehension techniques and may be used to identify future training needs. Ultimately, the analysis of pursuit statistics enhances the safety of police officers and the public they serve.
Before the Pennsylvania Police Pursuit Reporting System went online, individual police departments submitted pursuit data on paper forms, which were mailed to PSP and manually entered into a database for analysis.
In July 2002, PSP began collecting pursuit data electronically through the Web-based system, then generating a number of reports to meet state requirements, using the WebFOCUS product. Today, annual and year-to-date activity reports are compiled into a series of charts and graphs that are available to the public. The reports include information about why a vehicle was stopped, how long the pursuit lasted, whether there were injuries or fatalities, and how the incident was terminated. Authorized users from other jurisdictions can compare additional details about the pursuits.
The Pursuit Reporting System incorporates a new database while using some common look-up tables with the Uniform Crime Reporting system. "Information Builders developed the system quickly, for a very reasonable cost," Benedick says. "We have been very happy with the services they provided."
Formerly, PSP spent between 200 and 300 hours each year manually checking the incident forms, scanning the data, and verifying results. At the end of the year, they had to write report procedures to extract the information from the database and put it into a presentable form. Now, everything is automated, and users can generate reports whenever they want. The new system has completely removed manual tasks from PSP personnel during the report-generation process and eliminated production and mailing costs for shipping hardcopy reports.
Information Builders' Consulting continues to assist with new reporting projects, working with EDS as part of an ongoing partnership. For example, they are currently developing several new types of incident reports and developing an integrated geographic information system (GIS) for visually mapping crime and associated police activities.
"The ability to provide real-time crime data to police departments and the public enables police departments and municipal officials to measure trends that can be used to adjust their crime-fighting efforts and resources," Thurston concludes. "The more accurate and complete the data, the more valuable it becomes as a planning tool."
