It’s hard for your officers to quickly find a policy
Now more than ever, law enforcement agencies are under a microscope. When officers refer to outdated information in the field, it becomes a liability for them, the agency, and the community. PowerDMS gives your officers access to current policies and procedures from any device, anytime, anywhere.
PowerDMS features an intuitive keyword search, folder hierarchy, tags, and bookmarks. Combined, these tools make locating policies and procedures quick and easy. All content is indexed for full-text search, so results are returned for any match within the document, including attachments, metadata, and tags. This helps officers find what they need, when they need it.
With our access control feature, you can set access levels for individuals and custom groups for every important document. And with version control, you can feel confident that only one published version of a policy exists.
By switching from paper to digital, you save money on paper, printing costs, filing cabinets, and space. Storing your files in an organized central repository prevents policies from being damaged, misplaced, duplicated, etc., which saves you time.
You don’t have a streamlined way to collaborate on policy changes
In today’s ever changing environment, it’s important for policies to be continuously reviewed and updated. With review workflows, you’re automatically emailed when it’s time for a policy’s periodic review. Workflows make it easy to collaborate on, edit, and obtain approval on policy changes electronically. Once a policy update has been approved and published, it’s automatically distributed to officers for electronic signature and the old version is auto archived. When time is of the essence, policies can be updated and disseminated in hours rather than days and weeks. This keeps officers informed and always aware of the latest policies and procedures.
If a situation happens with your officer, it’s time consuming to prove they were trained and knew the protocol
Without the right digital tools, accurately tracking policies is extremely difficult. And if you can’t track policies well, how can you get accredited, prove compliance, and/or mitigate risk when an employee is non-compliant?
With PowerDMS, you can promote accountability, protect your organization, and empower your supervisors with these key features: E-signature tracking, audit trail, and reporting.
Promote accountability
Policy admins can assign any document to be acknowledged and signed by employees in one of two ways: 1) entering username and password or 2) using their thumbprint or face ID on the mobile app. This verifies they have read and understood the document, and it protects your organization against future labor disputes. PowerDMS automatically notifies employees about documents pending their review and signature. That way, you don't have to personally remind dozens (or hundreds) of employees.
Protect your organization
A complete history of every document is tracked in our system, including updates, comments, status, and signature history. We also store and track who has read, signed, edited, and approved each version of a document across its entire lifecycle. This includes archived versions of policies and associated data, which can be pulled to prove compliance at any point in time.
Empower supervisors
Dashboards within PowerDMS provide an overview of documents still needing signatures, outstanding workflows, and employees with outstanding tasks in their To-Do list. There’s also a built-in reporting tool, which lets you see the full history of actions for a particular piece of content – who has signed it, who needs to sign it, and any document review steps.
You are paying a lot in overtime training costs
It’s not easy getting your officers in the same room at the same time for in-person training. Between overtime pay, instructor fees, and the time it takes to plan/schedule the training, it can get expensive. What if your staff could complete redundant training from anywhere, at their own convenience?
With our training tool, you can create, distribute, and track electronic training courses to reduce the cost and complexity of in-person training. Our intuitive platform lets you assign competency tests before a policy can be signed, track training and certifications, issue employee surveys, aggregate training requests, and much more.
Completing your self-assessment takes a lot of time
Getting and keeping accreditation is time-consuming – at least it is with a paper-based process. It can be a drain on your current resources, especially if your agency isn’t big enough to justify a dedicated accreditation manager. When compared to paper alternatives, PowerDMS is proven to reduce assessment preparation time by 50%, on average. This leaves more time for police work.
We partner with more than 60 accrediting bodies, including almost every state and national law enforcement accrediting body. This puts your policies and documentation in the cloud, right next to the latest standards. We’ll also alert you automatically if a policy or standard changes, so you will always be accreditation ready.
PowerDMS lets you upload policies, procedures, and other proofs of compliance (documents, videos, images) to standards to complete your self-assessment. Once uploaded, PowerDMS intelligently links your policies to those standards and you can electronically highlight the portion of your document that meets them. Thanks to this connection, you will be notified automatically when a policy is changed so you can verify it still meets standards. You’ll also receive automatic notifications when an updated standard may impact one of your policies linked to that standard.
You can also conduct mock assessments or have your assessor review your documentation prior to arrival, which reduces the duration of your onsite assessments. Fewer days often equals savings for you, since agencies often incur the cost of an assessor’s travel expenses.
You are looking for ways to build trust with your community
In today’s climate, maintaining transparency and trust with your community is more important than ever. With our Public-Facing Documents tool, agencies can make their policies publicly available with the click of a button. When you make a change to the document in PowerDMS, the public version is automatically updated, so you don’t have to manage two different versions.
Public-Facing Documents gives your community, other law enforcement agencies, the media, and attorneys a way to view your policies on their own. This improves relations and cuts down on public records requests for policies.
Your agency deserves the best solution
Here at PowerDMS, we’re dedicated to helping law enforcement agencies like yours better serve their communities. Thanks for everything you do. It’s important work. It’s a sacrifice. And you deserve the best policy solution to help you do it even better.
Forged in the public safety sector, PowerDMS helps you assess and improve your practices and policies so you can deliver transparent, safe, and accountable law enforcement services to your community every day. The added benefit is that you also save time and money.
Next steps
Start the conversation by contacting us today. We’ll set up a time for you to discuss your agency’s needs and how we can help.
Otherwise, check out our next article, Law Enforcement agencies we work with, to learn more about the agencies we work with and how we help them.
When policies are added to a binder and thrown in the trunk of a squad car, it becomes a liability
When policies are added to a binder, thrown in the trunk of a squad car, and hastily skimmed in dire situations, it becomes a liability. For your officers, your agency, and the community.