POSS meets the challenge of capturing and managing real-time
data efficiently for the Toms River (NJ) Police Department.
The Toms River Police Department serves Toms River Township, the county seat of Ocean County, NJ and is the seventh largest municipality in the State of NJ. The police department is responsible for the patrolling of the township’s (53) square miles, which includes the Atlantic Ocean-­‐front beaches as well as waterfront property along Barnegat Bay. Given the township’s substantial recreational appeal, visiting tourists often add significantly to the population of 95,000 full-­‐time residents. The Atlantic County Department of Public Safety consists of the Division of Adult Detention, the Division of Youth Detention, the Office of Emergency Preparedness, the Police Training Center, the Office of Highway Safety, and the Office of the Medical Examiner. The Toms River Police Department decided to pursue an automated solution that would enable personnel to quickly and easily perform scheduling functions with time and attendance data readily available and accessible. The specific objectives of the Toms River Police Department were as follows: • Provide a solution that would capture scheduling and attendance data in real-­‐time. • Provide a solution that has the ability to schedule personnel for weeks and/or months in advance. • Provide a solution with versatility that would allow for quick and easy modifications to existing scheduling data that would take into consideration variables such as changes in personnel availability and requirements. • Provide a solution that would easily export attendance data to payroll with the ultimate goal of freeing up civilian personnel for other critical and essential tasks. DEPARTMENT
FACTS
160
sworn officers
75
civilian employees
24
detective personnel
The Challenge:
Prior to 2008, The Toms River Police Department was utilizing a hand-­‐written, paper and pencil system for scheduling personnel. Despite the size and scope of the department, personnel were still required to sign in and out, and complete hard copy requests for time off, overtime, and special duty assignments. Paper schedules rarely, if ever, extended out past a week or two. Additionally, supervisory personnel were unable to ascertain schedules and assignments for individual officers without going from unit commander to unit commander to obtain critical data. Meanwhile, civilian personnel were spending countless days tracking and entering attendance and payroll data for each and every pay period.
“The name Police Officer Scheduling System told us everything that we needed to
know. This was a program designed to meet our specific needs as a police
department. And it has done so in every way.”
Captain Mitch Little –Toms River (NJ) Police Department
The Answer:
Within the first quarter of 2008, The Toms River Police Department had their answer. Implementation of the POSS (Police Officer Scheduling System) from VCS, Inc., was well underway. According to Captain Little of the TRPD, the decision was an easy one as POSS was the only system that truly was designed to meet their needs in every way. “All of the other systems out there seem to be designed for 9-­‐to-­‐5 environments and lack the special features that we need to track and allocate personnel and resources”. “POSS is a program designed to meet our specific needs as a police department”. POSS is a comprehensive and automated time management system specifically designed to meet the unique needs of law enforcement personnel. Agencies have the ability to schedule employees for weeks, months, or even years in advance with complete access to schedule and attendance data by individual officer, squad, or department. With the ability to access POSS via the Internet, personnel can check schedules and request time off from any location at any time. The system quickly exports data in a variety of formats for utilization with payroll coupled with a multitude of resource reporting availability.
The Result – Real-time Scheduling For Real-World Challenges:
POSS provided the Toms River Police Department with the automated scheduling, attendance, and time management capabilities that they were hoping for, and then some. Key project objectives were met and system benefits were immediately evident. With Internet capabilities, supervisors now had access to scheduling and attendance data from any location at any time. The ability to instantly locate an officer to determine availability for overtime or extra duty assignments was now accessible through POSS. Creating schedules that could be easily viewable and printable by day, week, month, and year was now a simplified and error-­‐free process. Civilian and non-­‐
civilian personnel had immediate access to schedule data with the ability to check real-­‐time vacation balances and accruals, accept or refuse overtime and extra duty assignments, and correspond with supervisory personnel effectively and efficiently. The Toms River Police Department saw significant improvements within the areas of communication, time management and reliable record keeping capability immediately. VCS’ comprehensive implementation plan and commitment to user support provided all of the assurances that the Toms River Police Department needed to validate that they were in the hands of true experts in the field of Public Safety scheduling. “Like anything new, POSS took some getting used to”, stated Captain Little. “But VCS was always there for us whenever we had a question or concern.” Significant benefits were additionally evident in the area of payroll management as well. According to Captain Little, “Exporting data to payroll used to take days. Now it takes minutes”. POSS allows for the direct export of all payroll data and thus eliminates the need for the time-­‐consuming, tedious, and error-­‐laden system of hand data entry. Overall, POSS has cut time spent on payroll-­‐related functions in half, allowing for the reallocation of personnel for other tasks and assignments.