Customer Profiles

From information sharing to eliminating siloed systems, learn how police agencies use NicheRMS365 to increase efficiencies and better serve their citizens.

CAN

CAN - Ontario Police Technology Information Cooperative (OPTIC)

NicheRMS Forms Foundation For the Largest Police Data-Sharing System In North America

Ontario Police Technology Information Cooperative


The Ontario Police Technology Information Cooperative (OPTIC) includes 8,287 officers: 2,894 from 43 municipal Ontario, Canada police agencies and 5,393 from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), all sharing a single Niche RMS installation. OPTIC is the largest data-sharing cooperative in North America.


OPTIC AND NICHE RMS

Accommodating member agencies’ widely varying business practices was a key challenge in the delivery of OPTIC’s RMS, which has successfully achieved multi-jurisdictional data sharing to an unprecedented degree. Differences are especially marked between municipal agencies and the OPP; NicheRMS meets this challenge through configuration options controlled at the agency level, providing all OPTIC’s members with control over their own data within the shared system, and allowing confidential materials to be restricted as necessary. All general police domain data — such as incidents, police reports, property, and digital mug shots — is shared.


THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

OPTIC is the successor to OMPPAC, which was formed in the 1980’s to share computer technology and information. The cooperative developed a requirement for a single system that would support the sharing of key information about people, locations, vehicles and incidents between its member agencies. In 2000, the cooperative selected NicheRMS, as it

was not only the ideal choice to replace their aging legacy OMPPAC system, but was also able to handle the specific, demanding business requirements for widespread, complex data sharing. The OPTIC installation was rolled out to the OPP within 12 months, and to all 43 municipal agencies within 18 months.


BUSINESS BENEFITS
  • Successful rollout of a single system to 43 agencies and 10,000 personnel in two years.
  • OPTIC’s NicheRMS has been judged a success by its members and is now proven in a number of operational situations.
  • The capacity for agencies to configure business processes independently at the domain level while still being able to share information at the cooperative level.
  • Protection of confidential information that allows member agencies to control data sharing at a granular level without compromising the wider data-sharing needs which support the system’s primary objective.