John, Good questions. We have done our homework and have studied the cost/benefit analysis. First remember that we are a non-profit, 501(c)3 corporation. 59 of the 60 agencies interviewed have supported the concept 100%. The one holdout was a small agency that did not fully understand it and wants to keep doing it the way they have manually, for dozens of years.
Remember, we have done all this before successfully for 12 years. The only reason we could not continue was that we did not have windows and browsers available in MV. Interesting point here is that the replacement, funded by a state agency, still does not have the solution as strong as what we had. However, is has SQL (which cops do not like) and graphic link analysis which they love, and windows and browsers (which we now have). The three primary decision makers are money, human resources, records management and sharing. There are literally hundreds of existing commercial offerings for police agencies. They are expensive to acquire and then, if they are maintained, expensive to continue to meet the needs of agencies. Seldom do they keep up with new technology much less trying to keep up with the latest mandated requirements. We will offer the buy-in for less than 1k (US) and $500 a year to maintain per port. A port could handle from one to dozens of users. We maintain the system with not only the mandated requirements but also state of the art. If additional hardware is needed then they purchase what is necessary from the commercial marketplace. We do not sell hardware of any kind. We will offer a limited amount of hours of free conversion. Thereafter they will be quoted a low price for one time conversions. Secondly, we will offer NIEM XML automated links to existing record management systems to avoid redundant data entry if they wish to keep their existing systems. Of course there will also be the manual data entry for the smaller agencies. This will also serve as the interface from Computer Aided Dispatch systems. We will never offer any kind of CAD systems as there are many excellent companies that offer this. One of them from California, HiTech, strongly uses the MV world as its foundation. This is a very cost effective solution. It puts the millions of records into a sharing network but also maintains the local police agency controlled databases. Most of these records do not ever make it into NCIC. An example is 9-11. There were other tidbits of information and traffic stops that never got put together. Training will be all online on an as needed basis. These training video's will be constantly maintained and revised as required. All additional MV requirements and local interfacing needs to CAD or RMS will be done by MV consultants. As a non-profit we cannot recommend consultants but only provide lists of experienced MV persons who have related expertise (from our volunteers first). Bottom line benefits are: 1. Very cost effective for acquisition and maintenance 2. No redundant data entry 3. Maintained for mandated and state of the art operation at no extra cost 4. Automated national sharing for rapid suspect identification and investigations 5. A measureable impact on national and international crime solving Significantly more benefits to numerous to list. Bob --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Israel, John R. <johnisr...@daytonsuperior.com> wrote: From: Israel, John R. <johnisr...@daytonsuperior.com> This sounds very interesting and a worthy concept. But as others have stated, there are already packages of one kind or another in place. Even if yours is better, it will be a huge hurtle to get them to convert and getting them to do duel entry (current system plus your new system) simply will never happen. This begs the questions: Why should they switch to this new software? Even change for the better is painful. What benefits will it provide that make it worth the pain of switching (cost, training, user-acceptance)? John ------- u2-users mailing list u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
