Kofax TotalAgility Digitally Transforms Search Warrant Process

Irvine, CA and Bethlehem, PA, March 15, 2017 – Kofax^®, a leading provider of software to simplify and transform the First Mile™ of business, in partnership with BerkOne, a business process automation leader and Kofax value added reseller, announced that Kofax TotalAgility^® has been deployed by the government of Marion County, IN to enable, speed and streamline the issue of electronic search warrants. By digitizing documents and automating submission, review and approval processes, search warrants are now delivered in minutes, helping the county’s 16 law enforcement agencies and its judicial officers work more efficiently to maintain public safety.
The new system empowers law enforcement officers in Indianapolis and surrounding areas to complete and submit the search warrant form digitally from their vehicles’ computers. The document content and accompanying attachments are sent securely and imported into a central repository. The submission page is automatically separated from the warrant to alleviate privacy concerns. The system then extracts key information such as the submitting officer’s name, and the date and time of the submission, before entering the item into a review queue.
“When you take into consideration the travel time and cost, and the impact of having an officer essentially off the beat performing an administrative task, it added up to a great deal of wasted time, effort and money,” said Pauline Beeson, Director of the Marion County Arrestee Processing Center. “We knew that there had to be a better way to manage search warrant processing—one that would free up our law enforcement and judicial officers to focus on more important duties.”
Court clerks and judges are automatically notified via email when a new warrant is awaiting review. If a submission in a clerk’s queue is not processed within 10 minutes of receipt, the clerk receives a second email alert. Similarly, judges are given 25 minutes to review and approve or deny a warrant. Once this time period has elapsed, the job is automatically assigned to a secondary judge who is notified by email and given 10 minutes to complete the review.
“Kofax technology is helping us to shape a much more streamlined approach to warrant processing,” said Amitav Thamba, Chief Technology Officer at Marion Superior Court. “We are empowering law enforcement teams, clerical staff and judicial officers to work more quickly and conveniently than ever before, which allows us to fulfill our mission to provide effective and efficient justice for all.”
The system also sends automatic updates to the submitting officer at various points in the process, including when the submission has been received and when it has been added to a judge’s review and other work queues. If a judge requires additional information to process a warrant, he or she can communicate with the submitting officer directly. In this instance, the officer can modify and submit the revised form via email to a separate inbox dedicated solely to updates. Any new emails and attachments are automatically linked to the original submission, and the judge can complete the review using the new information.
“The Marion County e-warrants case study is a great example of streamlining an otherwise labor-intensive cross-organizational business process with a user-friendly capability, implemented economically and adopted eagerly,” said Rick Holgate, Research Director, Gartner. “It shows tremendous ability to be reused in the nationwide criminal justice community and has potential for application in other similar use cases – such as registration and licensing – to displace manual, paper-based legacy processes.”
Once a warrant has been granted, the system creates a PDF document that includes a cover page summarizing the submission details, submission form, the warrant itself and a return form for printing. After serving the warrant, the officer delivers the physical return form to the clerk’s office to confirm that this step has been completed. This electronic warrant request and approval processing system is the only 24/7 warrant system of its kind deployed in the state of Indiana.
“The system was developed quickly and delivered benefits right away,” said Steve Hendrick, BerkOne’s Director of Enterprise Solutions. “The initial rollout was delivered six weeks after we agreed on the re-engineered process. We then tuned the system in response to user feedback for full production use.”
“Having jointly delivered effective solutions to Marion County over the past six years, Kofax and BerkOne have a deep understanding of county government processes, requirements and challenges,” added Reynolds C. Bish, Chief Executive Officer of Kofax. “When Marion County voiced a desire to streamline the search warrant process, they again turned to us to deploy Kofax TotalAgility. The innovative system saves time, lowers costs and has enabled law enforcement and judicial officers to perform their jobs more efficiently and in the best interest of citizens. It serves as a model for municipalities across the country looking to make similar gains.”
For more info: Marion County case study