Summary
The ability of the police to identify fugitives and arrest serious offenders will soon be made easier with the transformation of web services. This will not only provide law enforcers access to the criminal database but also those cases under the FBI. It is expected that this initiative will solve the County’s challenges of integration and the expansion goals related to the enhancement of county processes with technology, improving management of IT resources, and simplifying and standardizing the IT environment and expansion of e-government services. The development of the integrated system that take into consideration the county’s myriad mainframe systems will form the strategy in achieving this goal.
Developing the mainframe forms the benchmark for this initiative but the police must have the technical capacity to access the criminal records database in the mainframe. The old that had a number of limitations must therefore be overhauled and bring in the element of a justice system capable of accessing multiple systems to cross-reference county, state and federal databases. The integration of the old legacy application and the web based front must be done through web services for a reliable and efficient connection between these two points. The developers report no technological drawbacks and plan to have the project run smooth and successful. With a budget of $ 400,000 from the police department database access-project budget and existing training and consulting budgets, the project is estimated to have the needed tools put in place before the end of the year. The extraction of criminal information from the mainframe is beneficial to the Miami Dade County in a number of ways because the process involves a number of business processes in the legacy systems.
Statement of the Problem
Efficiently dealing with the problem of identification of fugitives still remains with the sector of law enforcement. This is complicated further by the lack of adequate technology that is able to provide criminal database at local, state, federal, and FBI to police officers on patrol. “Success in understanding and developing Web services can mean the difference between keeping and losing your IT job and the good news is that there are successful, time-tested models of development practices that can help developers create enhanced Web service applications and plan for their long-term success and maintenance.” (Devx, 2009)This calls for an integration of all these legacy systems into a single mainframe database. The main problem of achieving the goal of integration is the enormous cost involved since activities of crime monitoring was done in a point to point fashion.
Proposing a Solution
A lot of effort, time, and huge expense had been spent by the County on the search for an integrated system and limitations of the old applications that must be overhauled points to the fact on the need to find a solution to the challenge. Furthermore, the stability and capacity of the mainframe forms a fundamental part of the County’s technological infrastructure. “Overcoming the state of disintegration is the key first step for an organization, not just as the foundation for future integration with suppliers, customers and other third parties, but also in ensuring the continued competitiveness of the business overall”. (Baker, 2002).The only solution is the development of mainframe that will have the capacity to provide county law enforcement’s access to a criminal records database. Laptops installed in cars of mobile patrol officers can access the information stored in the criminal database in the mainframe.
Learning application
“Web Services Integration enables leading financial organizations to manage their operations more efficiently through the effective use of technology”. (WSI, 2009). The proposed solution would work in this initiative because a number of factors are in its favor. First, the analysis of this case study reveals that there has been no technological hitch or difficulty; and, as such the project is can be technologically viable. Secondly, there has been adequate funding for the development of this project. In addition to that, web services provide the best and fast mode of retrieving data online and are capable of storing very large volumes of data. In integrating the database of different state organs and achieving higher efficiency in performance, web services fit perfectly into the achievement of these goals.
Reference List
Baker, S. (2002). The three steps to Web service integration. Web.
Devx.com (2010). Ensuring Successful Development of Web Services Today and Tomorrow. Web.
WSI, (2009). Web Services Integration. Web.