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From the General Manager's Desk
We're very pleased to welcome
the forty federal, state and
local law enforcement agencies
that joined the BIO-key user
community this Summer! Many of
these new user agencies are
located in Kentucky, where
Kentucky State Police now serves
as a host for more than 130
local police departments, in
addition to providing MobileCop®
to its own force of 500
troopers. By providing the
central mobile switch hardware,
software and support, KSP
estimates that it saves each
hosted agency as much as
$175,000, enabling even the
smallest local police force to
provide its officers with mobile
data.
KSP is just one of the many
state and local BIO-key
customers around the
country providing a similar host
service to other agencies. And
as federal grant funding
continues to emphasize regional
cost sharing and
interoperability, the hosting
approach will make even more
sense - for both host and hosted
agencies.
Feedback from our
customers confirms that our
product platform works very well
in the hosting environment.
InfoServer's support for
heterogeneous networks means
that individual agencies can be
on different radio or IP-based
networks. In addition, InfoServer
6.0 includes web-based admin
tools that simplify setting up
and managing different groups
and other host agency tasks.
We're doing all we can to
support host customers in
bringing mobile data to agencies
who don't have it today. Host
agencies can benefit directly
from our volume purchase
discounts on client licenses, as
well as no-charge upgrades to
server software and add-ons like
FIT™, PatrolJournal™, MobileCop®
Navigator, and InfoExchange™.
If you'd like to find
out how hosting can
help increase your agency's
productivity, while
lowering costs, please call
me. We'll answer your
questions and link you up
with other customers who are
hosting today.
Ken Souza |
Customer Support
Forums Update: InfoServer™
6.0.1 Available
InfoServer 6.0.1, with fixes and
new features for InfoServer,
MobileCop, MobileRescue™ and
Comm Server, is available for
download from the BIO-key
Customer Support Forums website.
After just three months, the
Forums site has seen nearly 300
posts and has become a great way
for customers to ask questions,
exchange best practices, and get
advice from each other, as well
as BIO-key staff. One East Coast
user, for example, got help with
the MobileCop Text-to-Voice
feature from another user on the
other side of the country.
It also provides a forum to quickly
give us feedback on new products and
features and how they can be
improved even further, as when one
customer wrote that they "absolutely
love" the new InfoExchange product
and used the Forums to suggest an
enhancement.
And it's always great to read
"Thanks for your help," as one
customer posted when a BIO-key
engineer helped resolve a problem in
routing return messages to a CAD/RMS
user.
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Live, No-cost Training from Your
Desktop
 One
clear benefit BIO-key customers get
from our Software Support and
Maintenance Program is useful
product enhancements, like the new
InfoServer 6.0.1, at no additional
cost. Now, there's an added benefit:
no-cost training on these
enhancements, as well as other new
products. You and your staff are
invited to participate in a series
of monthly training webinars that
Customer Advisory Board member Todd
Beam says "hits the key topics" for
mobile data administrators.
The currently-scheduled webinars
are:
o Tuesday
11/13/2007: PatrolJournal and
PatrolJournal Enterprise
o
Tuesday 12/11/2007: InfoServer
Administrative Basics
All sessions will start at 1 PM
Eastern. Godfrey Sohler, BIO-key's
Law Enforcement Training Manager,
has designed these sessions as live,
interactive events, where you can
ask questions and get answers and
learn more about how your colleagues
around the country are using these
products today.
Click here and type in "Sohler"
to register for either or both of
these sessions. We'll continue to
post the upcoming webinar schedule
in future newsletters and on the
Customer Support Forums site. |
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 PocketCop®
2-Factor Authentication in Baltimore
Baltimore, MD Police Department
has recently deployed PocketCop
on BlackBerry smartphones and
implemented 2-factor
authentication using an
electronic token device - one
of BIO-key's FBI-approved
authentication methods. At
logon, the PocketCop user is
prompted to enter his user name
and password and the
randomly-generated
authentication key displayed
on the Secure Computing token
device provided by BIO-key. It's
all entered on the same logon
screen in a simple, one-step
process.
Frank Zapushek, PocketCop System
Administrator at BPD, reported that
installation and setup for 2-factor
authentication went "real smooth."
He said that users found the token
easy to use, especially since they
generally only need to generate an
authentication key once a day during
initial logon. Since the user's
authentication is valid for as long
as the handheld device is connected
to the server, users can log on once
at the beginning of their 8-hour
shift and remain connected and
authenticated for the entire shift.
For more information on each of the
approved authentication methods,
click here. |
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New Customers
 BART
and Youngstown, OH Deploy MobileCop
In addition to the Kentucky law
enforcement agencies that came
onboard this Summer, other new
customers include Bay Area Rapid
Transit (BART) and the Youngstown,
OH Police Department. Stolen
vehicles are frequently deposited in
BART parking lots, according to
Travis Gibson, Commander of BART's
Patrol Bureau. With MobileCop,
officers will now have the
capability to quickly run license
plate checks, as well as identify
outstanding warrants on individuals
they stop.
For the Youngstown Police
Department, MobileCop has already
helped in the city's "zero
tolerance" crime and gang violence
prevention program. At traffic stops
or at scenes of suspicious activity,
officers now use MobileCop to flag
stolen vehicles and guns,
outstanding arrest warrants, and
suspended driver's licenses, as well
as alerts posted by other Ohio law
enforcement agencies.
Click here for more information
on these new customers, as well
as news from current customers,
including Anchorage, AK, Oklahoma
County, OK, and Baltimore, MD. |
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 New
Product Spotlight: MobileCop
Navigator
Have you looked at
mapping applications for
your MobileCop users,
but been discouraged by
the cost of dedicated
GIS systems or the
bandwidth needed for a
centralized system?
With MobileCop
Navigator, BIO-key now
offers an economical and
easy-to-implement
in-vehicle mapping
solution. Quickly and
easily accessible from
an icon on the MobileCop
screen, MobileCop
Navigator:
o
shows the location of
the user's vehicle on a
map of the department's
jurisdiction
o
gives the user driving
directions based on the
address contained within
CAD calls received in
the vehicle without the
need for a dedicated
interface to the CAD
system.
o
lets the user "drill
down" for more detailed
map data
o
displays critical
Points-of-Interest
(PoI) defined by the
department, such as
government facilities,
known drug houses, or
areas of known hazards.
MobileCop Navigator uses
Microsoft MapPoint 2006
in conjunction with
Global Positioning
System (GPS) data from a
GPS receiver mounted in
the vehicle (or other
GPS-enabled device).
With information stored
locally on the user's
laptop, you don't need a
large, expensive mapping
system to retrieve
geographic information.
And because location
identification and
routing calculations are
performed in the user's
laptop rather than a
remote external system,
you get substantial
savings in both wireless
bandwidth and system
costs.
To see MobileCop
Navigator in action and
get answers to your
specific questions,
click here to
schedule a one-on-one
Webex demo at your
convenience.
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 Help
Improve the New NCIC Display
The new MobileCop NCIC
Display, announced in the last
edition of this Newsletter, gives
your users query results in a
consistent, easy-to-view summary
format on a single screen. This new
functionality is available, at no
additional cost, to BIO-key
maintenance customers, and the
latest catalogues (collection of
files used by the state interface
software for display) are
downloadable from the Customer
Support Forums site.
Now we need your help to continue to
improve the NCIC Display with:
o
more in-state response types
o
display of out-of-state NLETS
responses consistent with in-state
responses.
Because there are minor variations
in the format of data
state-to-state, we need
representative samples of individual
state queries and responses. If
you're able to provide us with your
XSI logs on a periodic basis, you
can help us improve the response
data that is formatted and displayed
for your agency and other agencies
in your state. Instructions for
uploading XSI logs are available on
the Customer Support Forums site (to
registered users) in the
State Interface and NCIC Display
Forum. If you have any
questions, please contact Mark Hald
at
mark.hald@bio-key.com. |
 Washington
County MN Builds Interoperable
Network
Sergeant John Israel of
Washington County (MN)
Sheriff's Office
recently shared his
agency's experience in
implementing a
multi-agency,
multi-network mobile
data system in a
case study published
by BIO-key and Radio IP
Software. With
InfoServer's support of
multiple, heterogeneous
networks and Radio IP
Software's MTG solution
for automatic network
roaming, Washington
County built a regional
mobile data system that
utilizes both a
broadband cellular
network and the private
public safety radio
network.
With bandwidth and
network persistence no
longer issues,
Washington County was
also able to provide
officers with new
BIO-key mobile office
productivity tools,
including incident and
accident reports and
citations. As John
Israel told us, "For
officers on the street,
the car is the office.
We wanted to give our
officers as much
functionality as they'd
have in the office -
with the same network
responsiveness and
reliability."
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 Federal
Grant Update
This Summer the Department of
Homeland Security announced the
state-by-state allocations for
the $1B Public Safety
Interoperable Communications
(PSIC) Grant Program and issued
detailed funding guidelines to
states.
The PSIC grant program will fund
up to ten projects in each state
for public safety agencies to
acquire and deploy
"interoperable communications
equipment, software and
systems." While the primary PSIC
objective remains the
utilization of the reallocated
700MHz public safety spectrum,
recent program guidance makes it
clear that funding is available
for other multi-jurisdiction
projects that use "advanced
technological solutions for
communications
interoperability," including
"broadband voice, data, or video
applications."
Mobile data solutions, like
MobileCop, MobileRescue and
PocketCop, meet the PSIC
priorities of spectrum
efficiency and
cost-effectiveness by
significantly reducing radio
voice traffic and by enabling
interoperable communications
across multiple heterogeneous
radio and broadband networks.
A key deadline is approaching.
States must submit their
project-by-project Investment
Justification by December 3rd.
State allocations and
the Investment Justification
Reference Guide can be
downloaded here.
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 APS
QuickTicket Electronic Citations Now
Available from BIO-key
Our newest mobile data
partner solution -
QuickTicket electronic
citations from Advanced
Public Safety (APS) -
can quickly pay for
itself in increased
productivity and more
accurate and
legible citations.
With QuickTicket you
can:
o
capture information directly
from MobileCop queries and
CAD data to auto-populate
the data fields on the
ticket
o
issue tickets in less than
60 seconds with just a few
clicks
o
print a paper citation
on-scene (with a compatible
remote printer)
o
electronically upload
citations data to any RMS,
Court, and/or other database
system (with SmartExport).
Click here for more
information on QuickTicket
and other BIO-key partner
solutions, or call us at:
800.400.6311.
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BIO-key Newsletters Now Available
Online
Looking for information you
remember reading in a past
Newsletter edition? You can
click here or just go to
"Newsletters" under "News and
Events" on the BIO-key home page
to access recent Law Enforcement
Newsletters. We've also posted
the most recent edition of our
Biometrics Newsletter on the
site.
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