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North Carolina State Highway
Patrol Selects Interplat
to Write Electronic Citation System
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Overview
eCITATION® is a wireless mobile application that replaces paper-based traffic
citations. Through extensive, user-friendly features and functions, traffic
citations are written on the officer’s laptop or MDT. They can then be
immediately transmitted wirelessly to the court system, or can be transmitted in
batch electronically at the end of the day, in either case avoiding delays,
mistakes and redundant data entry inherent in paper citations. In addition to
the time and money savings at the station and courthouse, eCITATION® allows the
patrolling officer more time to do his job.
Interplat Solutions bid
for, and won the contract to rewrite the eCITATION® system for the North Carolina
State Highway Patrol.
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Business Challenge
The original pilot
software was architected such that counties experienced problems in
adjudicating citations because needed data was not available in the
courtroom and the software was lacking in essential edits. For example, the
application allowed the officer to send a defendant to a courthouse in a
county other than where the offense took place and to a courtroom not in the
specified courthouse. Also, officers were forced to enter the court date and
day of week, without edits being present to confirm that the two were in
sync.
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Fayetteville police officer Randy
Sessoms operates a laptop
computer in his car to issue an
electronic traffic citation.
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In addition, the
software did not indicate successful or unsuccessful transmission of
citation data. Officers did not know if cases had been created
successfully after transmitting them to the middle tier software that
periodically forwarded citations on to the Administrative Office of the
Courts (AOC). As a result, citations were often lost and not accounted
for.
Since the Highway
Patrol would license the application for use by every law enforcement
agency in North Carolina, it needed an application that is lightweight,
easily deployed, and able to communicate either over the AOC’s network
or an SSL-based Internet connection. The software also needed to run on
Windows 95, which would rule out many of the newer development tools.
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Solution
Interplat's first
step was to make better use of existing hardware and Microsoft® Windows™
operating systems by completely rewriting the client application with
Microsoft® VisualStudio. The single-tier, proprietary architecture was
replaced with Microsoft's component-based, three-tier model. By implementing a
solution based on COM, Interplat was able to make use of various third-party
components and write the complete application in less than four months. The
result was an intuitive, easy to use, single-window application that Windows™
users have come to expect.
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The data integrity challenges were
solved by extensive use of dropdown lists. The items in the lists are filtered
appropriately so that an officer does not inadvertently make a bad choice. The
use of dropdowns not only solved the data integrity issues, but also greatly
minimized the data entry time.
Interplat reduced the data entry
time even further by implementing the ability for officers to enter defendant
information either by scanning the North Carolina drivers license barcode or
by getting the information directly from the North Carolina Division of Motor
Vehicles. In addition, many of the fields default to the last used values,
allowing officers to skip over them entirely.
The deployment issue was solved
by creating a professional, wizard-style installation that can be run either
from a CD-ROM, a network, or the Internet.
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Use in the Field
eCITATION® software is installed on the patrolling officer's laptop or
MDT. Paper citation booklets are no longer needed. After entering a
citation, the officer may print out a hard copy for the defendant. The
citation may then be transmitted wirelessly to the central court
repository (AOC in North Carolina), where it maintains its electronic form
through adjudication in the courtroom. The system indicates successful and
unsuccessful transmissions by either associating the AOC case number with
the citation or presenting the officer with an appropriate error message.
If errors are encountered, the officer may correct them and retransmit the
citation. Data entry errors are again greatly reduced by improved
client-side data validation before transmission.
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"eCITATION®
is awesome. It takes me less time to write citations, and I am
able to write more as a result. The fact that there is less paper
involved is also great. I don't have to mess with 3 copies, and I
know once I've transmitted it to the court system that citation is
complete."
Sgt. Ron Jacobs, NC State Highway Patrol |
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The ability to work "offline" allows officers to continue issuing and
printing citations even if the centralized server is down. This also makes
for more effective use of the officer's laptop by allowing it and
eCITATION® to be used in the courtroom, making witness information and
officer notes easily available. |
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Time and Financial
Savings
Use of eCITATION® results in substantial savings of time and money for
law enforcement agencies and court systems. The patrolling officer enters
the citation data once, transmits it, and moves on to other duties.
Supervisors spend less time in reviewing citation data. And importantly,
there is no need for additional data entries by administrative or court
personal.
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“With eCITATION® fully implemented, the State
of
North Carolina could save over $5 million a year.”
Major W. Fletcher Clay
NC State Highway Patrol
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eCITATION® Highlights
- integration of DMV information including
driver license verification and information retrieval
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ability for the officer to work online or offline
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integration of court system charging language including
search features and customization
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integration of NC Driver’s License bar code scanning
for when the officer is offline
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clerk review and audit trail features
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generation of hard copies for receipt purposes
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server side maintenance of variable edit fields
including county, offense, road and location information
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Interplat’s Steve Kulig
with
Major Fletcher Clay of the
NC Highway Patrol at the pilot
launch of eCITATION®.
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Contact Information
Howard L. Higgins (NC State Highway Patrol, Ret.)
Law Enforcement Technology Analyst
Direct Dial: 919-749-5373
Email:
howardhiggins@interplat.comStephen C. Kulig
Executive Vice President
Direct Dial: 910-303-3885
Email: stevekulig@interplat.com
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