Abbotsford Police Department serves the city of Abbotsford, British Columbia. With over 200 police offers, supported by another 200 staff and volunteers, Abbotsford PD is dedicated to providing the highest quality service to its residents with the goal of making Abbotsford the safest city in British Columbia.
When one thinks about a police department, about the last thing that comes to mind is content. Content however is central to every activity police departments engage in: accident and arrest reports, traffic tickets, statements from eye witnesses, itemized logs of physical evidence, video footage, emails, press briefings, and more.
Naturally, most of this content needs to be shared – among staff, with other law enforcement agencies, with attorneys general and other political organizations, the media and members of the community. The Abbotsford Police Department (APD) traditionally relied on its FTP server to deliver this content, which often was in very large files. Setting up new accounts and administering those accounts however was a time-consuming process for the department’s small IT staff and often lead to delays in sharing content. This proved to be very problematic when content was time sensitive.
APD needed a collaboration solution that wasn’t just secure and easy to administer. “Our number one priority was ease of use,” shared Gord Boyes, APD’s Manager of Information Technology. “We wanted to train our people once and equip them with the means to share content efficiently and safely at any time of day, whether at the station or out in the field.”
APD evaluated several solutions but Accellion’s secure content collaboration platform, kiteworks, stood out. First, a private cloud deployment ensured the security of the department’s content. Second, an easy-to-use solution with an intuitive user interface ensured adoption and self-sufficiency. Finally, administrative functions such as file / folder expiry as well as visibility into when files were received and downloaded enhanced file management and compliance. In Boyes’ words, “kiteworks was the clear answer.”
Currently, kiteworks is being utilized by staff and investigators and even the Chief Constable and the Department’s board of directors. The solution is being used to support active criminal investigations and allows staff to easily share interview transcripts, video footage and PDF forms among all personnel involved in case work. Reams of evidence is now shared instantly and securely, making reliance on FTP accounts, USB thumb drives, DVDs and couriers all a thing of the past.
Boyes summarizes, “kiteworks is used across a wide-range of police activities and has proved its worth day in and day out.”
To Learn More
To learn more how Accellion helps the Abbotsford Police Department share files and collaborate securely, download the case study.