LA Sheriffs Get High-Tech Help Serving Legal Papers

Pairing Hewlett-Packard's iPaq Pocket PC with software from Synchrologic, integrator Infokall developed a mobile solution that should expedite the department's citation process and cut the turnaround time of 15 to 20 days by at least 30 percent, said Rahul Harkawat, executive vice president of marketing and alliances at Infokall, based here.

That could add up to significant savings for the sheriff's department, which generates about $9 million in revenue annually from serving citations for businesses and citizens, he said.

"Not only will we realize highly improved operational efficiencies, but our field personnel will be able to spend more time in the field, where our constituents need us," said Lieutenant Jim Oneal.

This is the first project from the partnership between Infokall and Atlanta-based Synchrologic, a provider of mobile synchronization software.

Los Angeles County originally came to Infokall to help reduce the paperwork involved in the serving process. The sheriffs' deputies had been carrying around log sheets on which they would note a visit to a particular address and whether they were able to complete the assignment. At the end of the day, the log sheets were turned in at headquarters, where a clerk entered the data into the county mainframe.

The data entry took some time, so reports were sometimes out of date, said Sathish Gajaraju, Infokall vice president of technology.

To increase efficiencies and move data processing to realtime, Infokall put together a wireless solution using the AT&T Wireless CDPD network in Los Angeles County. All sheriffs' deputies will now carry a wireless-enabled iPaq instead of the log sheet. The device will sync to a database in realtime and continually update the day's assignments. The device also will alert other deputies on duty that a citation has been served.

In addition, the system will log the time the service was completed,an important piece of data for the sheriff's department, Gajaraju said.

"Some [actions must take place at a certain time in the day or it could result in liability," he said.

The project would have been straightforward if it hadn't been for the county's Modified Automated Process and Accounting System (MAPAS), which runs on a 25-year-old Unix mainframe.

Gajaraju said applications on that system have been changed several times. An additional wrinkle was that developers could find little documentation on the applications.

This is an issue encountered frequently in the public safety vertical, Gajaraju said, so Infokall looked carefully for a partner that could help it sync to the back end.

After evaluating several different synchronization packages, Infokall chose Synchrologic because of its flexibility, Gajaraju said. For Infokall developers, the ability to add data calls and calculations when synchronizing to the back-end system was critical.

"Synchrologic provides quite a bit of flexibility [when it comes to business logic," he said.

By using business logic, Infokall developers can sync to the Unix-based mainframe and its database, as well as perform calculations for fees, depending on the type of action completed, he added.

At the same time, Infokall developers pored through code on the mainframe side to find the best tie-in to the system.

Their hard work has paid off. Infokall will complete its first city rollout this month and has received approval to deploy the system across the county, Harkawat said.

Harkawat believes that once the Los Angeles County project is completed, other county and state law-enforcement agencies will follow suit. "Los Angeles is the county other agencies tend to watch," he said.