TokOpen is providing document management solutions for some of the leading law enforcement agencies in the US. These range from such large organisations as the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation - to individual Sheriff's Offices.
Two of these are Walton County and Floyd County Sheriff's Office. Walton County is positioned between two of the state's largest cities, Atlanta and Athens. The Sheriff's Office is divided
into 4 divisions: Operations, Investigations, Administration and Corrections. Altogether, there are 110 officers and 30 support staff based at a single office.

The office has taken TokOpen to enhance its existing investigative case file system. This is a traditional PC-based solution which had served and still serves the Sheriff's office well, but whose mainly text-only functionality was increasingly becoming perceived as outdated.

"Text was no problem but the system's limited capability meant that we'd have separate manual files for photographs and other images, including hand-written documents and a variety of other forms", says Major Travis Brown of the Walton office.

"These were held at several locations in the office which meant unproductive use of time for officers and prosecuting attorneys to physically get hold of them. The Walton County District Attorney's office is located in another part of the county. Before TokOpen, if someone wanted information on a case, such as a booking report, crime scene photos, etc then that person had to make a trip of several miles to the Sheriff's Office. Once there, they had to manually look up the case file in a large file room, and then make copies of whatever it was they were looking for, because the Sheriff's Office would not allow the case file to leave the premises".

"Now, the District Attorney and his or her investigators can look up anything associated with the case file from his or her PC via a county Wide Area Network. They also receive much higher quality copies of information because they are now dealing with digitally saved data instead of photocopies"

Around a year before the installation of TokOpen, Walton spent in the region of $40,000 on a mechanical filing system installed in a room roughly 40 by 20 feet. Shelves are mounted on rails so that they can be slid together to allow for more filing room. When someone wanted to retrieve a case file, they had to determine what row the case file was located on and then create walking space between the appropriate rows of shelves via a control panel in the room. The installation of TokOpen will eventually make the system obsolete and create a significant amount of office space.

Floyd County's experience was rather more of a longer journey. With an area of 550 square miles and a population of 90,000, Floyd County Sheriff's Office has 135 officers and support staff. Jail capacity is 750. There, TokOpen replaces a traditional and completely paper-based filing system. No PCs, no microfilm; just paper. Implemented also by Paragon Total Solutions, the new system has produced significant benefits in just the three months it has been up and running.

"This is our first electronic solution," says Floyd County's Lt. Mark Blanton. "Before, the paper filing was inefficient. It often took a long time to find information, and frequently involved long walks to the other end of the building. The argument for replacing it by a computer-based network with full document management capability was overwhelming". In fact Floyd had the same type of shelving system as Walton, except it wasn't powered and had to be manually cranked to move the rows of shelves.

"Now, we can scan in all relevant material - text, handwritten documents, photographs, other images, forms and literally anything that fits under a scanner platen," says Lt. Blanton. The system automatically indexes everything - text and images - and tucks it away in a single folder. The indexing means that we have full search capability so a user can get at anything in seconds. Before, once someone had taken a file out nobody else could use till it had been put back. Now, there is no restriction on how many people access any file at the same time".

Floyd County is now using TokOpen's archive ability to store electronically all paper files going back 10 years. Each of these tens of thousands of documents are getting the same automatic indexing and full text search functionality as if they were today's.

"Now if we are interviewing someone who is helping with our inquiries, we can check their record out instantly. The integrity of the electronic files provides more assurance of accuracy and better supports lines of investigation that may previously have been obscure," says Lt. Blanton.
Main benefits perceived by the Sheriff's office? "Ease of access; the ability to retrieve anything you want on a single screen - and space saving. We're emptying a whole large room of filing cabinets".

Another feature both Sheriff's Offices found to make a significant contribution was the support for a much more disciplined audit trail. Case files can contain very sensitive data. Previously, if this data was mishandled, there was no way of identifying the culprit. Now an administrator can view every change made to the file by viewing the audit log.

© Copyright 2004 Tokairo