Public Safety Integration in Oxnard

Public Safety Integration in Oxnard, California

The Situation

Oxnard is the largest California coastal city between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The City’s scenic locale and proximity to two major business centers has drawn more and more people to the region. This rapid growth has increased demands on its Public Safety services to the community.

The Oxnard Police Department provides a full range of law enforcement and public safety services including Patrol, Investigations, Traffic, Booking, Code Regulation, SWAT, Surveillance and Hostage Negotiations. The Oxnard Fire Department equally provides comprehensive services such as Fire Suppression, Urban Search and Rescue, Emergency Medical Services and Water Rescue. The increasing scope of Public Safety services, as well as the growing number of incidents, required careful incident management capabilities which the existing information technology infrastructure lacked.

The Challenges

Much like many cities throughout the U.S., the technology supporting Oxnard’s Public Safety teams was obsolete and could no longer support the increasing demands of modern Police and Fire departments. The same proprietary PRC/Digital Equipment Corporation technology had been in operation at Oxnard for more than 12 years. The hardware was beginning to show signs of its age through frequent outages lasting a couple of days each because replacement parts were becoming difficult to locate.

Their ability to accurately geolocate units was limited, so the management teams operated primarily on a paper-based process. The substantial size of Oxnard’s geographical service area further heightened the need for mobile automation for an expeditious response. The existing core PRC system operated in a closed and proprietary environment, which limited the integration of mobile devices to third-party products and were unable to provide the information or flexibility required by the field response teams.

203,585

Citizens

500+

Police & Fire Personnel

Square Miles

12+

Year Proprietary Systems

The Solution

Sciens Consulting developed a Citywide IT Strategic Plan incorporating all City departments based on a thorough assessment of the technologies supporting Oxnard’s Public Safety systems. The infrastructure was reviewed against continuity of operations requirements. We also tracked user functional requirements incorporating workflow analysis from call receipt to UCR and NFIRS reporting.

An RFP was written that detailed user functionality requirements pinpointed during user interviews and workflow review. The vendor proposals were evaluated, and a short-list of finalists were invited to present demonstrations of their solutions. Sciens participated in proposal evaluations and assisted in final contract negotiations, the review of each vendor’s scope of work and initial implementation activities, and acceptance testing documents. We developed the project implementation plan, and assisted the City Project Manager in the deployment of the integrated system.

The Results

The City of Oxnard deployed the new Public Safety systems on-schedule and within budget. The upgraded technologies have reduced the overall dispatch times, and offered better access to critical information in the field to preserve officer safety. The open architecture of the new system allowed the City of Oxnard to develop a data sharing portal with Ventura County. Officers now have access to county crimes databases, which provides better situational awareness valuable to preserving officer safety.