Anne Arundel County New CAD System

[ThePhotoGuy]

New Arundel dispatch system still down as 'adjustments' continue
By Andrea F. Siegel, The Baltimore Sun

Although county officials initially said they thought they'd have the dispatch system working again in a month, they have yet to set a new date for putting it back online.

Anne Arundel County Police: New Arundel dispatch system still down as 'adjustments' continue - baltimoresun.com

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

Dispatch system to remain unplugged

By BEN WEATHERS, Staff Writer
Published 03/31/12

The county’s multimillion dollar computer-aided dispatch system will remain unplugged until further notice, the county’s chief administrative officer said this week.

Dispatch system to remain unplugged • Top Stories (www.HometownAnnapolis.com - The Capital)

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

Escalating challenges for Anne Arundel's next police chief

He said Thursday that the county’s IT department is still hammering out technical issues with the system that must be resolved before officers are retrained. A date to relaunch the dispatch system has not been set.

Escalating challenges for Anne Arundel's next police chief - CapitalGazette.com: Government

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

County police months behind on filing crime reports

County police months behind on filing crime reports - CapitalGazette.com: Government

While the system has gone off online for an hour or so at times, the system as a whole has not suffered significant technical problems, Davis said — in contrast to the dispatch system, which county officials say will remain offline indefinitely.

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

County will scrap new emergency dispatch system, upgrade older one

New system has been out of service for a year

By Andrea F. Siegel, The Baltimore Sun
7:46 p.m. EST, December 27, 2012

Anne Arundel County will not revive the new emergency dispatch system that it unplugged a year ago, but will instead scrap it and modernize its old system.

Anne Arundel plans call for modernizing old emergency dispatch system, not using new one - baltimoresun.com

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

New IT director makes unplugged dispatch system 'high priority'

By BEN WEATHERS Staff Writer |
Posted on March 8, 2013

A multimillion-dollar law enforcement dispatch system that has sat unplugged for more than a year is getting a “high priority” review by Anne Arundel County’s new technology chief.

New IT director makes unplugged dispatch system 'high priority' - CapitalGazette.com: Government

 

[Grondoline]

New Arundel dispatch system still down as 'adjustments' continue
By Andrea F. Siegel, The Baltimore Sun

Although county officials initially said they thought they'd have the dispatch system working again in a month, they have yet to set a new date for putting it back online.

Anne Arundel County Police: New Arundel dispatch system still down as 'adjustments' continue - baltimoresun.com

The article you linked to is about a year old, but coincidentally, here's one from today's Capital.

New IT director makes unplugged dispatch system 'high priority' - CapitalGazette.com: Government

Looks like the new county executivess has made some changes in department heads and they might get it going again.

 

[troymail]

It'll be interesting to see if the new head makes a difference on this. I'm sure it was directive from the new exec to look into the millions of dollars sitting there doing nothing. I'll be pleasantly surprised if the new chief is able to get the problems fixed.... Being in the field, I know if can be difficult to get people to "change" but I also know that many times the tools provided as "newer" or "better" don't always turn out that way. Of course, the vendor always says they are better but they have to in order to sell their product. Don't get me wrong - I believe there are some nice features in the new system ... but interfacing to the existing county systems and more importantly - to the users of the new system - is where things need to be addressed.

My understanding is that the CAD system is under the control of the Police Department and the Fire Department and others are just "users" of the system. Having said that, and knowing all the problems both the police and fire sides reported, even if the police get their issues resolved, the fire side is still going to see resistance (unless they are able to address all of the "kludges" they tried to make it work (believe me it was ugly).

If the County was going from manual and paper to the new system, it would be a cinch.... but that's not the case.

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

It'll be interesting to see if the new head makes a difference on this. I'm sure it was directive from the new exec to look into the millions of dollars sitting there doing nothing. I'll be pleasantly surprised if the new chief is able to get the problems fixed.... Being in the field, I know if can be difficult to get people to "change" but I also know that many times the tools provided as "newer" or "better" don't always turn out that way. Of course, the vendor always says they are better but they have to in order to sell their product. Don't get me wrong - I believe there are some nice features in the new system ... but interfacing to the existing county systems and more importantly - to the users of the new system - is where things need to be addressed.

My understanding is that the CAD system is under the control of the Police Department and the Fire Department and others are just "users" of the system. Having said that, and knowing all the problems both the police and fire sides reported, even if the police get their issues resolved, the fire side is still going to see resistance (unless they are able to address all of the "kludges" they tried to make it work (believe me it was ugly).

If the County was going from manual and paper to the new system, it would be a cinch.... but that's not the case.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I guess it also depends on who is Chief, if they want to use the "New" Cad System also. We could be getting a new fire and police chief, who knows? If we get new chief’s, could we also see fire going to digital or police using more encryption (they use it a lot already)?

Interesting times ahead…

 

[Bote]

... Being in the field, I know if can be difficult to get people to "change" but I also know that many times the tools provided as "newer" or "better" don't always turn out that way. Of course, the vendor always says they are better but they have to in order to sell their product. Don't get me wrong - I believe there are some nice features in the new system ... but interfacing to the existing county systems and more importantly - to the users of the new system - is where things need to be addressed.

A lot of this has to do with setting expectations properly. I've been involved in both good and bad projects. On the good ones we listened to what they wanted and they were generally happy. On the bad ones the deal was struck by high muckety-mucks without regard to anybody below them.

 

[troymail]

Even if leadership were to change, I county't expect dramatic changes. If the issues aren't resolved, just changing who is in charge doesn't fix it.

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

Seems like everyday for the past week or two, police does a broadcast stating that all officers except supervisors have to log off. Any idea what's wrong?

 

[riveter]

Likely either sys patching or a sys reset due to some sort of repetitive error. We've had that with our OSSI software a few times- crashes and glitches days in a row that require everybody to log out for a reset.

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

It seems that there are too many people on it at one time and people that don't need to be on it, need to log off.

It is basically everyday, sometimes multiple times during the day the request is made.