The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 23, Number 6 | Page 9
The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | June 2017
Continued from previous page
And so it goes on.
Access, security and the audit trail
It must be possible to model access to certain data and certain tools by role within a force. For example,
the type of access available to officers may differ from, the access suitable for transcribers. This should
be possible regardless of the complexity of the organisational structure.
The solution should also allow for ‘fine grain’ management, with the ability to add further restrictions. For
example, whilst routinely the majority of evidence might be accessible to all officers involved in an
investigation, on occasions there can be a need to flag specific data items as ‘sensitive’ to very tightly
limit access to apply special designations to limit access to particular teams.
DEM solutions should also include sophisticated tools for auditing user access and behaviour. For
example, the solution should capture the start-time and length of play for video files, and not simply the
fact that a particular video was played.
Search capability
The ability to provide pre-configured searches to different users in different roles within the organization
is important if the DEM solution is to be support efficient and streamlined business processes.
Users should have the flexibility to search across the evidence store themselves using ‘google’ style
searching on all evidence metadata and narrow down their search results to identify the single evidential
file they wish to manage (e.g. play, view, edit etc). Searching should also be limited within the context
of user access rights within the solution.
Integration with core policing systems
Being able to tie evidence to the force records management system and support an interface to that
system, combined with a capability to define new and flexible business process work flows for managing
evidential material and support efficient end-to-end business processes for all digital evidential material.
The DEM solution should also be capable of having the review, retention and disposal process and dates
cascaded from the records management solution. The DEM should be capable of being the supporting
solution for core police systems whilst providing the enterprise platform for sharing evidence within and
outside the organization.
A critical solution deserves careful decision making
We finish with a question: is it realistic to aim towards having all of a force’s digital evidence in one
place? As far as we are concerned, the answer is definitely ‘yes’. From forensic imagery to CCTV footage
submitted by local businesses, the aim is very much to put everything at the fin-
gertips of officers and other users.
Further information can be found on our website or by contacting us by email
below:
www.evidence-works.com
[email protected]
As a strategic partner of NJSACOP we will be demonstrating our
EvidenceWorks® solution at the 31st Annual 8 Police Security Expo 2017.