Issue link: https://let.epubxp.com/i/206367
TAL K IN G P OI N T S press your vendors for specific details on capabilities. Ideally they will be able to show you versus just tell you, to ensure everyone's on the same page regarding what will be delivered. In particular, some of the things you should ask about when evaluating technology are: 1. How is security handled? You need to ensure only authorized people (with the need to know and right to know) get access. Can data be made safely available to others outside your department and limited just to the specific data that those other organizations or individuals should be seeing? What about auditing who is reading or modifying data? 2. What is the time to deploy the system? Can it receive and transmit data in common formats like NIEM out of the box, or is there a lengthy data modeling and/or ETL and/or "transformation" development stage involved? 3. How easy or hard is it to add new data sources, change the search/query capability, etc.? Does the vendor provide development tools so you can do this yourself, or do you need to hire specialized consultants? How long does an average development project take? Weeks, or months or even years? HOMELAND SECURITY CERTIFICATE PROGRAM Courses for public safety practitioners. Courses include: Law Enforcement Professionals Available Now! Fire Service Professionals Available Now! Emergency Management Professionals Coming Soon! No fees, no cost! Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium DISCLAIMER: This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number 2008-GD-T8-K015 administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/FEMA, Training and Exercises Integration Secretariat. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not represent the ofcial position or policies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. To enroll or get more information please visit www.preventivestrategies.net or call 1-800-860-6657. Circle 24 on Reader Service Card 38 Law Enforcement Technology November 2013 4. How good are the geospatial capabilities? Can you easily associate information with a location, and search for information by location, proximity, etc.? Can you visualize the information in your GIS tool of choice (ESRI, Google, etc.)? 5. How good is the search and query capability? Can you easily explore, filter, and drill down into your information in an ad hoc way? For unstructured information (text, video, audio, etc.), is it easy to incorporate metadata to aid in searching? Can you do full-text searching, and do the results come back just as a list of links, or with actual information in the results pane? 6. How smoothly do the vendor's tools work with other applications that you use, such as Microsoft Office, or link analysis software? What is the process for getting information out of their system into these other tools, and can you incorporate finished reports back into the system? 7. What resources (personnel and costs) does the system take to run/maintain on an ongoing basis? Do you need a full-time DBA to support it? Are license and support fees per user? Does it need specialized hardware to run? As your data volume or user volume grows, what will the impact be in terms of future resources/costs? 8. What kind of support is offered? What kind of downtime do current customers experience? Are there backup and recovery features? For systems where you will be updating information, what is the risk of data loss in the underlying database? What types of customers do they currently have, and what types of applications are running on this technology? Are they mission-critical? Other features that you might want to consider asking about include: 9. Alerting capabilities. Do you have to re-run your searches every day to see if new information is available, or can you just save your search and have it run automatically and "push" the information to your e-mail or phone? 10. Can you (with appropriate permissions) update the information, for example to add notes or "tag" something, or are you only getting a "read-only" view? How long does it take for any updates to be made available to other authorized users when they are searching for information? 11. If you are dealing with information in multiple languages, does the vendor's technology support search in these languages? 12. Can information be made available on a variety of devices (PC, laptop, mobile, etc.)? How much work is involved to support this? Doing your due diligence on a vendor is a critical step in getting the functionality you need. Ask each vendor you're evaluating the same questions so that you can accurately compare products, and push for more details if you are not absolutely certain you know what they are saying. Any good vendor will be happy to work with you on this important process. ■ www.officer.com