Data Collection: County Security Assessment
The Challenge
In the wake of several nationally publicized school shootings, the state of Virginia began requiring a comprehensive assessment of all of the schools in the state with data to be provided back to the state on a fairly short turn around.
One county school district faced a significant challenge in gathering this information for reporting, but they also wanted to use this data gathering mandate as the first step towards better managing safety and security across more than 80 schools in their county on an ongoing basis.
This meant not simply gathering the data one time, but developing a solution that would help them manage that information day to day and year over year.
One of the most significant challenges they faced was in gathering this information with only a handful of safety officers. The school district wanted to better understand how security was being managed across all of its schools, but it needed a way to get and maintain that information without necessarily having to have an officer on every site, every day.
The Solution
The school’s district chose the Extensible Assessment Manager (ExAM) to gather their security data. Because ExAM was developed from the ground up to support rapid, large-scale data collection they only had to add their own questions and the state of Virginia’s questions to ExAM in order to be ready to start gathering data.
The team could then work in real time, using the ExAM app on site and on their existing handheld devices. Real-time reporting enabled the Schools Safety Team to monitor progress every step of the way. ExAM also opened the door to direct data collection from stakeholders enabling key stakeholders in the schools to participate in the data collection process so that the district’s relatively small security team could focus on problem areas and analysis of the data.
In the first year the team was able to go from an understanding of their school’s security posture based largely on the experience of officers on site to a comprehensive understanding of security based on a 295 question comprehensive assessment in just six weeks. Once complete the data was easily provided to the state in order to meet compliance requirements, but more importantly it became the start of a data-driven security program that delivers annual security improvements by enabling participants beyond just the security team to understand the security posture of the district’s schools informing not just active security measures by budgeting, planning, and communication of security requirements.
Schools
Security Questions
Security Officers
Amazing Result
Changing the way you work.
Mobile
ExAM is built mobile first on the Salesforce1 platform so that you know you can depend on it – anywhere, any time on any device.
Workflows & Automation
ExAM takes the ad hoc out of your business process. Manage inspections and assessments according to workflows and approvals you establish. Work smarter not harder.
Dashboards & Reports
ExAM helps you make better decisions. Our powerful dashboards and reports aren’t user-friendly, they are awesome.
