How Peregrine avoids common deployment pitfalls
Eric Wood
Government agencies are unfortunately used to technology implementations that are over budget and late. Government tech projects over $6M only succeed 13% of the time and according to Ernst & Young, “only 7% of surveyed government leaders said their organization achieved its digital transformation objectives.”
Public safety agencies aren’t immune, and it’s not a new problem. In 2019, the Green Bay police department struggled with the implementation and deployment of a new, $1.2M computer-aided dispatch system (CAD). The police chief said "It's definitely impacting our ability to do our jobs. . . Our hardest workers, the real go-getters out there, are the ones least satisfied" with the system change. Even in the UK, the Thames Valley Police (TVP) has spent over $16M on enterprise resource planning software it no longer plans to use.
Poor technology deployments are often a result of two primary issues:
Subpar data integration at the outset of the project, which causes workflows to be incomplete and augmented with manual workarounds — the same problem the technology should solve.
New data sources or new use cases for current data come up during the implementation process, which can materially delay deployment.
A project that’s over-budget or breaks when it’s deployed results in two concurrent problems. First, it wastes resources – the department’s time and taxpayer dollars. Second, public safety officials expend more time and effort to provide quality service because they’re fighting against the tools they use every day.
Our technology — the dynamic and flexible data model at the heart of the Peregrine platform and our proprietary data integration tooling — solves those two implementation challenges from the outset, so the entire process is much faster and better than most in local and state governments are accustomed to.
Smooth implementation is the first step towards usability. Peregrine surfaces connections and insights derived from meaningful links between siloed data so everyone in the department can make better choices when it matters most.
The result? Our customers use Peregrine to transform the investigative process, deliver real-time crime trend analysis, improve officer retention, streamline government reporting, make key resource allocation decisions like patrol schedules, and more.
Command staff are empowered with accurate data on violent crime trends and involved persons to better collaborate with social service organizations and the community on the best approaches for making a positive impact. Patrol officers will have confidence in what approach works best for a given situation — whether it be a potentially violent encounter or interacting with a subject with behavioral health issues — improving responses to calls for service and officer safety. Investigators can leverage Peregrine to do their jobs with conviction, accessing all the information they need at their fingertips to formulate better hypotheses, get answers precisely and quickly, and ultimately find the insights and connections they need to solve a case.
And the solution starts with a deep understanding of the real-life relationships between siloed data so it’s usable for public safety officers.
Understand real-life relationships between siloed data points
Data in any public safety technology — People, Places, and Things generated from computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and record management systems (RMS) or automated license plate readers (ALPRs), for example — are objects. Every object is a collection of attributes — vehicles, for example, each have an associated make, model, color, and year. And a data model is a digital blueprint of the world, containing all the objects that your staff analyzes and connects when they run a search, produce a report, or respond to a call for service.
Let’s use a 911 call as an example. That is one data point — an object. In real life, “objects” don’t exist without context — connections to other objects. A 911 call is connected to other objects like a phone number, caller, location, a responding officer (and “objects” he or she generates, like videos from body worn cameras) and potentially a vehicle or suspect.
Our flexible data model links data across siloed systems together to surface accurate links between “objects,” much like they have in real life. This gives public safety officers the context they need to ask better questions of their data and make better decisions as a result.
So how do we get there?
Deep knowledge of public safety data
Our team has vast and varied expertise working with many different size law enforcement and other public safety agencies. Peregrine’s dedicated, experienced implementation team — specializing in software engineering, product development, user engagement, and training — ensures departments can get started in days, not months.
Our team understands the systems you are integrating into Peregrine and it’s likely we’ve worked with them before. We know how the “objects” relate to one other in the real world, and we know how to work with your team to configure the platform in a way that aligns with the daily realities of your users — from Chiefs of Police to detectives, from analysts to patrol, and everyone in between,
Captain John Reynolds, from the Livermore Police Department, said Peregrine’s “data integration was smooth, and Peregrine’s implementation team has been incredible. They’ve been responsive to our staff and the needs of our agency. Even post-integration, their support has never dropped off.”
That knowledge is baked into our dynamic data model with predefined objects, characterizations, and attributes of those objects. We call it “the smart default for public safety,” because our model was built with an understanding of how different public safety agencies work and the numerous ways they interact with information. So, on day one, Peregrine will surface connections and relationships between discrete data points because of our data model, ensuring our customers avoid the most common pitfall of all — technology not working or being too cumbersome to use effectively once it’s deployed.
Beyond implementation: new data sources and new data use cases
It’s also common for public safety agencies to find new data sources or develop unique use cases for existing data during the implementation process. In either case, most technology providers have a once-size-fits-all implementation and new data sources or use cases can severely delay implementation.
A common example we see are local law enforcement agencies that would like to leverage data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) to help solve crimes involving firearms. For most organizations, if you don’t know upfront that you’ll be using NIBIN data at the beginning of the implementation process, integrating that information mid-process will likely pose material complications.
We’ve solved that problem with proprietary tools to make it easy to securely move, model, and link data between disparate source systems. If your team has a use case that requires unique links between objects, we don’t need new code or a massive data migration team of engineers to spend months building pipelines from scratch. Instead, we can easily configure the heuristics in the platform to do whatever you need, because of the substantial, upfront investment we’ve made in data migration and integration tools.
The same is true if your department wants to use its information in a new way. The data model ensures that the platform can be consistently configured to your department’s needs, whatever they are, so everyone is always empowered with real-time information to make the best decisions in the moments that matter most.
Demand better from technology implementations. Work with us today.
