Hamilton County, Ohio, recently tapped IBM Corp. to develop an applicationby which police officers will be able to file reports from the field, ratherthan sitting at their desks for hours a day doing paperwork. County officials said the application could reduce by 32 percent thetime police officers spend filling out reports. The number of police onthe beat will increase significantly without an increase in manpower, officialssaid. The contract, funded by a grant from the U.S. Justice Department, willput the necessary equipment into the county's 650 patrol cars by November. The application not only enables police officers to send the reports,but it also makes it easier to fill out the reports and to manage the approvalprocess.
Officers can tap into local, state or federal databases.
And the software updates those databases with the new information filledout by officers and provides workflow management, ensuring that reportsgo through the appropriate chain of command. All information moving across the network is managed as a Notes documentor folder. For example, a police officer can attach a digital image to areport, just as Notes users commonly attach documents to a Notes e-mailmessage. Domino Server makes it possible for different users to collaborateon documents as they move through the system. Because police work is so paper- intensive, treating application dataas documents should make it possible for the police to move into a digitalenvironment without drastically changing the way they do their work, Smithsaid.