Knowledge & Case Management

 

Enabling Technologies for Effective Homeland Security

Knowledge and case management are no longer just a nice-to-have items in your IT budget. Today, elected representatives, senior government officials, and IT managers all recognize them as the enabling technologies for effective homeland security.

Your enterprise collects, processes, stores, and distributes overwhelming volumes of data and information. This "content" is both structured and unstructured. It exists in paper forms, Microsoft Word documents, database reports, and email. The explosive growth of this content has made its management a more urgent concern than collection.

But the "infoglut" has a solution: the technologies and practices of knowledge management - and its counterpart, case management.

Knowledge management
Knowledge management provides the right information to the right person at the right time. For homeland security, this capability is critical to preventing incidents, managing threats, and responding to contingencies.

Northrop Grumman provides knowledge management solutions that enable your organization to:

  • Search for patterns in your vast data repositories
  • Effectively manage all forms of information
  • Share information with other departments and organizations
  • Route information efficiently and securely
Knowledge management is all about managing content (data and information), people (communities of interest), processes (procedures and workflows), and technology. These technologies may include:
  • Enterprise portals
  • Data warehouses
  • Data mining
  • Document management
  • E-forms
  • Imaging
  • Workflow
  • Records management
  • Information assurance
Northrop Grumman supplements these technologies with its core knowledge management principals of:
  • Process improvement
  • Effective collaboration
  • Policy and procedures
  • Management consulting
  • GPRA/ITAMRA compliance
Case management
Homeland security will increase the need for high-performance case management capabilities.

Traditional case management has been a paper-case folder stuffed with reports, forms, photographs, tenprint cards, and field notes. The folder is usually accompanied by a database that tracks key data about the case, such as the case number, investigator, and date. This largely manual process worked well back when cases were relatively small, uncomplicated, and didn't require the involvement of multiple agencies.

But not any more. Like so many cases in today's information-based society, homeland security cases must efficiently manage:
  • Complex matters involving multiple jurisdictions
  • Increased needs for information sharing
  • Data collection from private sector sources, such as the financial community and medical facilities
  • Multiple data formats, such as video, audio, and photography
  • Increased security
Northrop Grumman's case management solution handles all of these needs and more. It includes a fully integrated electronic "case folder" that:
  • Manages all types of data formats - from Microsoft Word files to e-mail
  • Improves productivity through automating the work processes
  • Automatically provides management reports on time spent on cases, testifying, training, etc.
  • Allows for more secure access to critical case information
A further benefit of electronic case management is the significant increase in continuity of operations provided by an electronic case folder system. The case folder information can be automatically replicated to an off-site secure location. So even if an earthquake, tornado, terrorist action, or the water pipe in the ceiling threatens your records center, you won't lose any critical information.