Automate Policy Updates to Ensure Law Enforcement Compliance

Find out how to use policy and accreditation management system software to maintain up-to-date law enforcement policies, procedures, and standards.

August 24, 2022

Article Highlights

Your agency wants to provide the best public safety services possible, which requires following specific policies and procedures to minimize risk to officers and community members. Law enforcement policies establish standard procedures and uphold a culture of accountability, so officers never have to wonder how to act. But to ensure continuous compliance, your agency must effectively manage, track, update, and communicate changes for all policy and procedure documents. PowerPolicy, a policy compliance management software by PowerDMS, provides the tools to accomplish this. 

The problem: Updating outdated policies 

When it comes to updating old policies, manual or paper-based processes are inefficient and resource-intensive. Staff must physically collect papers from everywhere your agency keeps documents whenever a change is made. This makes it difficult to know whether a document has been updated in all locations it’s housed, as well as increases the likelihood that employees accidentally reference outdated policies. 

In a manual updating process, staff must also communicate changes to members at all levels of the agency, then follow up to ensure relevant parties have reviewed and signed off on the changes. With no means to quickly track who’s seen what, staff are forced to engage in inefficient back-and-forth communication. Law enforcement compliance is a requirement for achieving and maintaining accreditation, but paper-based systems can hinder your agency’s abilities to prove conformity. Not only do these inefficiencies mean it takes longer to prepare for accreditation assessments, but it is also more difficult to hold each employee accountable. 

This is significant since outdated (or nonexistent) policies pose a huge safety and liability risk to your agency. Without policies in place, officers must decide how to act in the moment, increasing stress levels and the likelihood that mistakes occur in the office and field. Over time, improper public safety services, lack of compliance with policies and procedures, and lost or unsuccessful accreditation can cause the community to lose trust in your agency and increase the potential for lawsuits and other negative outcomes. 

The solution: Policy management with PowerPolicy

PowerDMS’s policy and compliance management software, PowerPolicy, enables your organization to ensure law enforcement documents are up-to-date and consistent across the agency and track staff acknowledgements to support compliance. 

With the software, you can create custom policy guides that are unique to your agency’s needs. Enable automatic notifications to alert departmental staff to any activity requiring their attention, such as reviewing and signing off on new document version releases. You can set notifications for specific users, departments, and refined lists, as well as specify the frequency and urgency of these automatic notifications. 

PowerPolicy also enables your agency to maintain version control and track a complete history of every document. This includes viewing changes made to policies or standards over time, comments and approval statuses, and the signature history of documents. Employees can even compare policies side-by-side to see what changes have been made. Additionally, PowerPolicy lets leaders track who has interacted with documents, including who has: 

  • Read a policy, standard, or procedure
  • Edited a document 
  • Signed off on a document
  • Approved the final version of a document 

To ensure officers don’t accidentally refer to an outdated policy, you can also automatically or manually archive old document versions, including setting specific archive dates to align with any departmental document retention rules. This ensures that, while using PowerPolicy, staff can always find the most up-to-date compliance policies and procedures without wasting time sifting through multiple iterations of the same document. 

The benefits of a policy management solution

PowerPolicy quickly communicates any updates or changes to policies used as accreditation documents so that your organization can maintain compliance across the agency. Not only does this make it easier for your agency to provide stellar public services to your community, but it also reduces law enforcement liability risk, helps you maintain accreditation, and promotes accountability. In doing so, your department strengthens relationships and fosters trust with your community. 

Plus, policy and accreditation management system software also saves your organization time and money. By automating processes that help you locate and update compliance documents, your organization can reduce your accreditation prep time by 50% on average. And since PowerPolicy provides digital document storage, you’ll also reduce printing costs by an average of $11k. 

Learn more 

Don’t let outdated policies expose your organization to law enforcement liability issues. Book a demo to learn how our policy and accreditation management system software, PowerPolicy, can help your agency today.

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