How Public Safety Technology Can Be a Cost-Effective Way to Improve Your Department’s Efficiency

Written by KOVA Corp

When it comes to public safety organizations - especially local ones like police, fire, and EMS - there's often one obstacle to improving services that is especially hard to overcome: lack of money.

This could be said of many government-run departments, but for whatever reason, public safety seems to get hit pretty hard. Many towns and cities face serious shortages of police officers, firefighters, EMS workers, and 911 dispatchers. And the nation as a whole is largely still operating on an outdated 911 communications system.

With these sorts of issues to deal with, it can often seem like getting the funds to implement new software is nothing short of a fantasy. But it doesn't necessarily have to be this way.

Public safety is getting its due - in some cities

In the last few months, a couple of American cities have made rather high-profile commitments to increasing their public safety budgets.

In Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Ethan Berkowitz added $5 million to the city's public safety budget in order to increase its number of police officers and firefighters. This will, he says, actually save the city money in the long run - with enough workers to adequately staff the police and fire departments, those departments' reliance on overtime will decrease.

In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced a focus on public safety in that city's 2016 budget. The funds will go to pay raises for police officers and to increasing the size of police recruit classes.

But notably, Mayor Landrieu is also intending to put some of the funds toward public safety technology. Good technology can help police do their jobs better and more efficiently, as well as help to make up gaps when the city's doesn't have enough police officers on the job.

On the other side of things, Dallas' city budget was questioned by public safety officials last September when it was passed. Although it added money to the public safety budget overall, police officials say that their pay is still lower than other cities. In addition, the overall percentage of the budget spent on public safety is down from 67 percent to 63 percent.

So while the struggle is still ongoing, it's reassuring to see that some places are realizing just how vital public safety is to a community - and, in turn, how vital money is to a strong public safety department.

Software and training can help make public safety more cost-effective and efficient

While having enough police officers, firefighters, and EMS workers on the ground is essential to a healthy, safe community, it's important to consider the role that technology can play in supporting these workers.

An antiquated 911 system that can't accurately pinpoint a caller's location results in longer response times, inefficient use of resources, and in the worst cases, worse outcomes for citizens.

Replace it with a system that adheres to Next Generation 911 (NG911) standards, and you've got a much more efficient system that can get first responders where they need to be more quickly and safely. That also means they can get back on the streets at a faster rate.

On the administrative side, clunky, hard-to-use software systems can result in greater lags between an incident occurring and the reporting of that incident; more instances of human error; and lower ability to identify trends and analyze data in cases.

But employing some of the vast selection of public safety technology that's available can make a huge dent in these issues.

A state-of-the-art system like Verint Media Recorder Public Safety Software, for example, can help administrators and public safety workers:

  1. Monitor PSAP calls and other interactions to improve performance
  2. Capture huge range of multimedia information from multiple sources
  3. Efficiently document and report on incidents

These factors, among many others, can make an investment in public safety technology part of a long-term solution that makes sense for the budget as well as a department's operations.

If your public safety department is looking for a cost-effective way to improve its performance, contact KOVA today!

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