How Technology Reduces Reliance on Manual Processes

Good policing has always been built on the same foundational elements: integrity, courage, and hard work. While that core foundation of police work remains the same, technology has radically changed the day-to-day responsibilities of today’s officers. Some of these technological advancements pose new and evolving challenges. Others present opportunities to grow and advance processes to save time, resources, and refocus energy towards other critical tasks.

In a recent webinar series, Vector Solutions teamed up with industry experts to explore cutting-edge technologies now available to law enforcement agencies and discuss how they are impacting law enforcement agencies around the nation.

In last webinar of this four-part series – “Empowering Today’s Officers: Tech That Will Help Your Agency Move Away From Manual Processes” – we discussed tools and software that agencies can implement to reduce their reliance on manual processes related to their law enforcement training programs.

Presented by Vector Solutions, the discussion was moderated by ret. Sgt. Doug Kazensky, Senior Solutions Engineer at Vector Solutions and featured Lt. Eric Benson, of Portsmouth (NH) Police Department and Sgt. T.J. Assion, of Mahoning County (OH) Sherrif’s Office.

What are common manual training-related processes at law enforcement agencies?

While the individual responsibilities of each agency will depend on their locale, there are certain tasks all agencies need to accomplish. Common tasks include maintaining vehicles and equipment, and responding to public records requests.

Training is another of these tasks. The exact amount and content of the training will differ by location, but delivering, tracking, and reporting on some sort of training activity is a constant for all law enforcement agencies around the country. As a result of this constancy, agencies will expend significant effort to support these activities. But how many agencies are spending more time than they need to be? Too many.

According to our experts, these are common examples of processes that are still being completed manually:

• Tracking training and certifications on an Excel spreadsheet
• Paper sign-up sheets
• Printing PDF training documents
• Pulling reports from multiple, disparate systems
• Tracking inventory on paper or Excel spreadsheets

By completing these tasks manually, agencies are often limited in their ability to track individual or agency-wide progress, stifling their capability to evaluate, measure, and improve their training programs.

“I had a three-ring binder of my instructor’s certifications and I promised myself that I would check it every month to see which instructor’s [certifications] were about to expire,” Kazensky said, giving an example of his own manual processes during his time as a training sergeant. “And that lasted exactly zero months. And I knew we needed to be better about tracking stuff.”

Sgt. Assion agreed, adding that managing policies was an area of improvement that they had identified at his own agency.

“Whenever new or updated policies needed to be released to the agency, it was always done in a paper format,” he said. “We would have to print off anywhere between two and 300 copies of a new policy and we used a spreadsheet with the employees printed name, signature, and date and that was the only way we were able to say they were accountable for being aware of the language of that policy.”

As shared by Sgt. Assion, they learned that managing policy acknowledgement via paper and spreadsheet meant the agency couldn’t be sure each officer thoroughly understood the content of the policy.

“We needed to not only be able to get verification that they received the policy, but also be able to track whether or not they had read the policy…and test their knowledge of that policy,” he said.

For Lt. Benson certifications were a consistent challenge for his agency. More specifically, they had no ability to set up automatic notifications when certifications were approaching their expiration.

“People’s certifications lapsed…and if you missed your [recertification] you had to go through the whole training again and start from scratch,” he said. “And when you’re running PDFs and paper sign-up sheets and Excel spreadsheets and Word documents with no viable way of tracking those things… it definitely aged me.”

What are the advantages of utilizing software to manage training?

If an agency does make the switch to something like a training management system (TMS) to streamline and simplify their training program, what kind of benefits can they expect to experience? According to Sgt. Assion, one of the most immediate benefits is being able to go paperless.

“Everyone gets a username and password to login. And that allows us managers of the program to track their training in real time. And if there are any issues or mistakes, we can remedy it instead of waiting two weeks to even realize there’s an issue. It’s accurate recordkeeping done in a timely manner.”

Before making the switch to Vector’s training management system, the training files for the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office were kept in varying locations based on the assignment of each employee. As a result, it made it significantly harder to track employee training if they swapped between roles.

“[With Vector’s TMS,] when the Sheriff comes into my office and says he needs all of the training records for these three deputies, it’s just a few mouse clicks.” Sgt. Assion said.

By keeping comprehensive records and having them so readily accessible, the agency has also reduced training-related liability. In doing so, they’ve saved time and money.

“Getting sued is part of the job and it happens to just about everyone at some point in their career,” he said. “But [Vector’s TMS] has helped us have lawsuits dismissed, it’s helped us win lawsuits. To me, that’s a huge benefit.”

According to Sgt. Assion, using a TMS has also helped offset the impact of short staffing.

“We’re all being forced to do more with less, and not having to chase paper everywhere is incredible,” he said. “We’re also able to offer our officers a mechanism to allow them to do training while they’re doing their other duties. If they get a 15-minute break, they can jump on and do 15 minutes of a course, and it saves that progress.”

Learn more about Mahoning County (OH) Sheriff’s Office >

Other benefits of using technology to manage training include:

• Delivering accessible training from anywhere
• Consolidating and tracking all training in one system
• Encouraging officer accountability by providing increased training transparency
• Overseeing all training requirements for mandates and certifications
• Ensuring comprehension of training or policies by building tests
• Building custom training tracks, training activities, system alerts, and reporting

For Lt. Benson and the Portsmouth Police Department, the use of a training management system has allowed the agency to simplify meeting New Hampshire’s extensive annual training and wellness requirements.

“Now, [by building credentials in Vector’s TMS,] when you take that course, you get credit for it and your progress bar goes up,” Lt. Benson said. “We also have a mandatory wellness consultation. And we’re able to track that in [Vector’s TMS].”

Portsmouth PD has also benefited from the use of push notifications to alert officers when they have upcoming training, thereby reducing instances of training deadlines being missed or officers not even realizing they had upcoming training.

“We have them for every single requirement. Anything that could expire, you have a [push notification] coming…with specific instructions on how to achieve that requirement,” he said.

In addition to utilizing Vector’s TMS to track training progress, Portsmouth PD also makes use of Vector’s FTO and performance evaluation software.

“The biggest convenience for us was the customization. You can tweak it however you want and constantly evolve it,” Lt. Benson said. “It’s also single sign-on so it’s under one roof. For us, having one sign-on and one website that people go to has been a godsend.”

Learn more about Portsmouth (NH) Police Department>

Learn more about the use of technology in law enforcement training programs

Over the course of our training webinar series, we’ve had the pleasure of learning from experts about a variety of training topics important to today’s law enforcement leaders. In addition to the topic shared in this article, topics included:

• How to effectively design online training programs
• How to make the most of VR for training
• Why utilizing blended training models provides the best of both worlds

Vector Solutions’ suite of industry-leading software solutions for law enforcement includes training management systems, online training courses, FTO/PTO/CTO/live skill evaluations, academy automation, and an early intervention and conduct management system.