DCS, a privately-held corporation based in South Carolina that markets software solutions for public safety, detention centers and prisons in the United States and the Caribbean, won an IBM Innovation Award in the small and midsized award category, and the company credits BCD Software for providing the tools that made the accomplishment possible.

DCS (www.dcs911.com) is a premier BCD business partner that uses WebSmart ILE to program its solutions that are designed to support government law enforcement agencies and detention facilities.

"I can code all day long with WebSmart ILE," Mary Rooney-Lucas, DCS president, told reporters attending a BCD press conference at COMMON. She said the public safety and detention arenas are a growing fields for software development and added that municipal agencies must find solutions to lower their costs but still provide adequate services to the community. She said that jails and correctional facilities will become customers in the coming years of innovative software solutions to help better manage their inmate populations while reducing costs.

DCS' award-winning solution was developed for the West Haven Police Department, which stores its records on an IBM i server. The DCS solution gives the department rapid in-car displays of police data and mug shots for officers in the field, live mapped tracking of police vehicles, and a way for citizens to file police reports on the Web. The solution combines GPS, Google maps, vendor software, and IBM i. DCS used BCD's WebSmart ILE, Nexus Portal, and Clover Query.

Central to the new West Haven police system is the department's ability to store mug shots on a central server yet have them available to officers immediately upon request. Other solutions that were tested required the database and photos to be stored on laptops in the police vehicles.

"It seems we read every couple of weeks that another laptop gets stolen containing secret data," said Sgt. Joseph Wynosky of the West Haven Police Department in a statement. "We avoid that by not putting any data on our field computers at all," he said. "It's all stored centrally on our IBM i solution and served up to our officers via a secure, wireless link and a Web browser. If a computer, or even a police car, is stolen, the department simply blocks access to the system, and no data is compromised."

The DCS solution also allows citizens to file minor police reports directly on the website. This saves the police department having to send an officer to the complainant's home. The approach is expected to save the department tens of thousands of dollars annually.--Chris Smith