How Accreditation Helps Law
Enforcement Agencies
Accreditation has historically been a voluntary process in law enforcement.
Recent state-level legislation and calls for police reform have made it a greater topic of conversation.
Explore our dedicated learning library to learn about accreditation and whether or not it’s the right next step for your agency.
Check out our list of articles on the topic below.
Ways to fund accreditation
Getting accredited can be cost prohibitive for some agencies. Discover how your agency can obtain funding through grants, risk pools, and more to achieve accreditation.
Top questions we get asked
Explore answers to the top questions asked by accreditation managers.
- What standards manuals does PowerDMS publish?
- How does PowerDMS help me prepare for an onsite?
- How is PowerDMS different from the competition?
- What ROI can I expect from PowerDMS?
- What programs does PowerDMS integrate with?
- Can I automate the policy review and approval process?
- Does PowerDMS let me control access to content?
We publish a wide range of state, national, and international standards. To see the full list of standards we publish, visit our standards manual page.
With our Standards as a Professional Service, you can add virtually any standards manual to PowerDMS. How does it work? If you can confirm you have permission to use the proprietary content, then we can upload your standards manual to PowerDMS. As part of this service, you also get access to every published standards manuals added by the PowerDMS community of customers.
PowerDMS maps your policies, procedures, and proofs of compliance to your accreditation standards. When your documents or standards are updated, you automatically get alerted about the potential impacts, along with a visual comparison so you can easily identify every change.
Each policy that has been mapped to a standard includes a reference of all related standards. This gives administrators the power to see each standard related to the document before updating said document.
With this tool, you can feel confident that your documents are always in compliance. Keep reading to see additional features that help you prepare for surveys or onsite assessments.
Many policy management solutions let you store, organize, create, disseminate, and track policies. But very few create a living connection between your policies, training, and accreditation. What do we mean by living connection?
PowerDMS is an ecosystem where policy, training, and accreditation all connect and inform one another. It gives you control over a single, living version of each of your policies with useful data like signature tracking, version history, and more included. It treats each policy as a living document, able to adapt to a changing landscape and unexpected threats.
It’s true, you get what you pay for. While some of our competitors outsource development and/or customer support to other countries, PowerDMS has a U.S. based customer success team and a 97% customer satisfaction rating. Unlike many other solutions, we are subject matter experts in accreditation and can help you solve your toughest compliance challenges in a timely manner.
Between online courses, training bootcamps, dedicated Customer Success Advisors, and a fast-response service desk, we provide the resources you need to onboard and maintain PowerDMS.
ROI will depend on your industry and organization. How long do your current policy, training, and accreditation processes take? Are they optimized and automated, or has your organization adapted to workarounds? With PowerDMS, you can expect to save 2x–4x the amount of time and money you’d typically spend on these processes. Our customers save an average of $10,000 on paper and printing costs alone. To calculate your estimated ROI with PowerDMS, use our ROI calculator tool today.
There’s also an intangible ROI, or VOI (value on investment), realized from PowerDMS in the form of accountability, trust, and risk mitigation. For example, mitigating the risk of lawsuits, fines, and brand disrepute makes a huge impact but can be hard to quantify. Policies, procedures, and training also impact organizational culture and increase employee accountability. All of this, when done well and with transparency, builds trust in your community.
To improve transparency and trust at your organization, learn more about our public-facing docs feature, which lets you share important information with your community.
PowerDMS currently integrates with the Microsoft Office and Adobe suite of tools, as well as OneDrive and Google Drive. Many integrations are coming soon, including Lexipol, Guardian Tracking, Envisage Technologies, Agency360, LEFTA Systems, and more.
We’re working towards an open API that will allow customers to integrate with any system they want for a nominal fee, depending on usage. It is currently in beta.
Although integration with any system will be possible upon release, your organization would be responsible for the connection.
Yes. Our powerful workflow tools let you automate the approval process. Various policy owners/reviewers can be assigned to review and/or approve documents. Each workflow step can be assigned to users, roles, or groups with the ability to templatize the workflows so consistent process steps are completed each time it is run.
Additionally, users/groups can be included in approval workflows on an ad hoc basis, including the ability to give one-time edit rights to a document. Workflow steps can be set to different levels of response: First Response, Dynamic First Response, All Response, or Simple Vote.
Yes. With PowerDMS, the security model is set by the customer, so you have total control over who can access the information in your PowerDMS site. Users/Groups/Roles can be assigned rights including View only, Audit (reporting), and Edit. Levels of access are defined by your site administrators.
What standards manuals does PowerDMS publish?
We publish a wide range of state, national, and international standards. To see the full list of standards we publish, visit our standards manual page.
With our Standards as a Professional Service, you can add virtually any standards manual to PowerDMS. How does it work? If you can confirm you have permission to use the proprietary content, then we can upload your standards manual to PowerDMS. As part of this service, you also get access to every published standards manuals added by the PowerDMS community of customers.
How does PowerDMS help me prepare for an onsite?
PowerDMS maps your policies, procedures, and proofs of compliance to your accreditation standards. When your documents or standards are updated, you automatically get alerted about the potential impacts, along with a visual comparison so you can easily identify every change.
Each policy that has been mapped to a standard includes a reference of all related standards. This gives administrators the power to see each standard related to the document before updating said document.
With this tool, you can feel confident that your documents are always in compliance. Keep reading to see additional features that help you prepare for surveys or onsite assessments.
How is PowerDMS different from the competition?
Many policy management solutions let you store, organize, create, disseminate, and track policies. But very few create a living connection between your policies, training, and accreditation. What do we mean by living connection?
PowerDMS is an ecosystem where policy, training, and accreditation all connect and inform one another. It gives you control over a single, living version of each of your policies with useful data like signature tracking, version history, and more included. It treats each policy as a living document, able to adapt to a changing landscape and unexpected threats.
It’s true, you get what you pay for. While some of our competitors outsource development and/or customer support to other countries, PowerDMS has a U.S. based customer success team and a 97% customer satisfaction rating. Unlike many other solutions, we are subject matter experts in accreditation and can help you solve your toughest compliance challenges in a timely manner.
Between online courses, training bootcamps, dedicated Customer Success Advisors, and a fast-response service desk, we provide the resources you need to onboard and maintain PowerDMS.
What ROI can I expect from PowerDMS?
ROI will depend on your industry and organization. How long do your current policy, training, and accreditation processes take? Are they optimized and automated, or has your organization adapted to workarounds? With PowerDMS, you can expect to save 2x–4x the amount of time and money you’d typically spend on these processes. Our customers save an average of $10,000 on paper and printing costs alone. To calculate your estimated ROI with PowerDMS, use our ROI calculator tool today.
There’s also an intangible ROI, or VOI (value on investment), realized from PowerDMS in the form of accountability, trust, and risk mitigation. For example, mitigating the risk of lawsuits, fines, and brand disrepute makes a huge impact but can be hard to quantify. Policies, procedures, and training also impact organizational culture and increase employee accountability. All of this, when done well and with transparency, builds trust in your community.
To improve transparency and trust at your organization, learn more about our public-facing docs feature, which lets you share important information with your community.
What programs does PowerDMS integrate with?
PowerDMS currently integrates with the Microsoft Office and Adobe suite of tools, as well as OneDrive and Google Drive. Many integrations are coming soon, including Lexipol, Guardian Tracking, Envisage Technologies, Agency360, LEFTA Systems, and more.
We’re working towards an open API that will allow customers to integrate with any system they want for a nominal fee, depending on usage. It is currently in beta.
Although integration with any system will be possible upon release, your organization would be responsible for the connection.
Can I automate the policy review and approval process?
Yes. Our powerful workflow tools let you automate the approval process. Various policy owners/reviewers can be assigned to review and/or approve documents. Each workflow step can be assigned to users, roles, or groups with the ability to templatize the workflows so consistent process steps are completed each time it is run.
Additionally, users/groups can be included in approval workflows on an ad hoc basis, including the ability to give one-time edit rights to a document. Workflow steps can be set to different levels of response: First Response, Dynamic First Response, All Response, or Simple Vote.
Does PowerDMS let me control access to content?
Yes. With PowerDMS, the security model is set by the customer, so you have total control over who can access the information in your PowerDMS site. Users/Groups/Roles can be assigned rights including View only, Audit (reporting), and Edit. Levels of access are defined by your site administrators.
Newton Police Department Case Study
Captain Dennis Berube is in charge of the accreditation bureau at the Newton Police Department in Newton, MA, a department of about 150 officers.
When Capt. Berube was assigned to oversee the accreditation process in July 2013, he was shocked by the amount of work needing to be done before the end of the year, when the department was seeking re-accreditation. Everything had to be done on paper, making the accreditation process incredibly time consuming and costly.