Team

Jinhee Park (Product & Design Intern)

James Friedman (Director of Product)

Matt Garrett (Senior Product Manager)

Wes, Alex S, Alex N, Mark, Christine, Nancy (Software Engineers)

Tina, Tad, Sid (Product Designers)

Tools

JIRA, Confluence, Dovetail, Figma

Timeline

August - September 2023

Brief

Mark43 empowers communities and governments with new technologies that improve the safety and quality of life. We build cloud solutions for first responders and the places they serve; on the flip side is the community focus which is giving them tools to police their police. The software enables transparency, accountability, and awareness for both sides of the public safety realm.

I was a part of Jail Management System (JMS) Team at Mark43, which is a product for booking arrestees into holding cells or jails.

This was a mini project I was assigned to do while my digital signing project was blocked by the stakeholders. I was asked to come up with a driver license scanning solution that can ease administrative tasks in the jail. Unlike my primary project, there was already an established, effective driver's license scanning solution integrated with another of Mark43's legacy products, which I needed to consider.

Project

Multiple customer agencies have been requesting a mechanism to scan a Driver’s License and upload the data into the Booking system. Additionally, they have conveyed their desire to make use of the driver's license data from our legacy product—OnScene (Computer-Aided Dispatch Mobile)—within the jail management system.

  • Utilize Microblink SDK for technology partner

  • Integrate data and workflow with the legacy products

Initial Research

How is Driver’s License being used for first responders / officers?

Q: What data needs to be parsed from DL Scan?

A: Information about a person that cannot change / hardly changes overtime

  • Information that can be used to track and find a person

    • Must: Name, DoB, Address

  • Could have these to identify characteristics of the person:

    • Race, Gender

    • Height, weight but some DLs don’t have weight on them

    • Maybe eyecolor, hair color

Q: What data is necessary to retrieve from running query?

A: Officer’s safety is number one:

  • Weapons

  • Any active warrants

  • Violent behaviors

  • Criminal history

  • Booking history

  • Medical restrictions, if stated on DL

Q: What happens if a person fails to present DL?

A: Use other identifiers, such as scars, marks, and tattoos, or LiveScan (fingerprints) to verify the person or manually input / write down information about the person in the report

Q: Which hardware is ideal for driver’s license scanning?

A: Mobile is ideal for both in-field and onsite customers

Q: Any state or juvenile regulations regarding DL data?

A: No additional regulations regarding state or juvenile.

Use Cases

Why do we need Driver’s License Scanning in Jail Management System?

I conducted an interview with ex-jail commander Jody Shoaf and reviewed previous customer research recordings on Dovetail to find out use cases of using Driver’s License Scanning in the jail setting. I then created quick mock ups and prototypes to illustrate the use cases of where and when this feature would be used within JMS.

1. To Book a person

  • Autopopulate a person profile between and within our products

  • Save time manually inputting information about a person in the report / booking form

2. Property release

  • Verify a person for property release

  • e.g. If a detainee’s spouse intends to collect the detainee’s belongings, they would need to provide their driver’s license for scanning by the officer. The scanned copy would then be stored as a physical printout. Rather than maintaining this manual procedure apart from the Jail Management System, we have the opportunity to digitize the entire process within our platform.

Existing Feature

Our legacy product—OnScene app’s (CAD mobile) DL Scanning is on android / planned launch for iOS in upcoming release

  • Scan License / barcode, auto populate fields

CAD uses microblink SDK for Android and iOS to scan and parse the ID data

OnScene app parse information from the DL into fielded data to conduct a Data Exchange (DEx) query

  • Information is stored within the normal DEx payload

  • At this time we are only working with DEX endpoints when sending the data

Workflow

How do we make sure the users of Mark43 have seamless experience in between the products?

Mark43 has three main products that work together as a suite. Not all customers have the full suite.

  1. CAD (Computer-Aided Dispatch): dispatch application for telecommunicating and accessing live data to safely respond to calls

  2. RMS (Records Management System): records management system to view arrest reports, citations, etc.

  3. JMS (Jail Management System): book a person into custody and manage inmates

All three of these platforms have corresponding mobile app: OSA (Onscene App), RMS App, and JMS App.

The high level workflow functions: CAD -> RMS -> JMS.

CAD sends dispatch data to RMS to make reports in. JMS receives person profile from RMS arrestee reports to easily book a person in.

However, not all customers have the full suite to access all of our platforms. I had to come up with a workflow that could cater to customers who are only using part of our products.

After communicating with engineers and product managers among OSA, RMS, and JMS, I came up with a high level workflow that would allow us to integrate Driver’s License Scanning as one seamless experience for our customers:

1. CAD/OSA transmit queried DL data saved in event to RMS report (via mobile app)

  • Facilitate the creation of new person profiles or addition to existing profiles

2. JMS can utilize this data to automatically populate person profiles during retrieval from the arrest report.

3. Both RMS and JMS would incorporate separate DL scanning features, distinct from the query function.

  • RMS users without CAD/OSA access can scan and transfer data

  • JMS users can use the DL scanning feature for external visitor IDs, such as a detainee's spouse

Integration

As our legacy product (OnScene App), the engineers will be utilizing tools and components from Microblink SDK to extract information from driver’s licenses using device’s camera.

The engineers will also be using Data Exchange (DEx) endpoints used in OnScene app to send data.

Next Steps

Once the project is kicked off, we would need to make sure to answer the following questions:

  • How do we make sure all teams are aligned?

  • What is the process for establishing the appropriate API endpoint in RMS to support JMS and other workflows?

  • How would we incorporate separate DL scanning features (distinct from the query function) into RMS / JMS? (for customers who won’t be using OSA)

    • What would that look like?

    • Where/when/how would it be used? (Booking/Property for JMS)

  • UX constraints with Microblink SDK?

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