Training academies are a critical component of producing high-performing public safety professionals.
In light of ever-increasing calls for accountability and transparency, the training system today’s academies use must:
Failure to do any of these things risks inadequately trained staff and an underserved public—and even opens your agency to potential legal liability.
It’s crucial, then, that your training academy system complies with your state’s standards and requirements and is up-to-date, accurate, and accessible to all authorized parties. This is best achieved through a single, centralized information system (like our Acadis® Readiness Suite).
One way to understand the benefits of a centralized academy training system is to look at the problems it solves.
An academy’s data can quickly become siloed when valuable course materials, completed exams, or certifications are stored and accessed in different places across a network—or worse, in filing cabinets or apps that aren’t compatible.
This siloed data is likely out-of-date, difficult to access, disconnected from other relevant information, or even lost.
A centralized system stores these documents in a standardized, instantly accessible interface—customized to your academy’s needs.
The more specialized your training is, the more likely it is to involve diverse types of activities and locations.
Centralized systems can track all of it—from traditional classroom-style training to coursework taken online to offline field exercises.
Faulty decision-making can result when academy leaders can’t analyze the big-picture data that can reveal problems in the curriculum, user interfaces, or recordkeeping.
All academy documentation is kept in one secure place in an integrated system, allowing for deep analytics and automated notifications to relevant parties as needed.
Traditionally, an academy’s IT department was charged with designing and maintaining its own network, providing the equipment and software needed, and making sure it was all compatible. Especially in the context of public-sector funding cycles, this usually meant using what worked for as long as possible, patching different systems together as needed.
A single system incorporating an academy’s training modules, trainee profiles and certifications, and the logistics of training itself means no more jumping from application to application, making updates manually, or hunting down “point people” and crucial files.
Even better, systems like Acadis evolve as your agency’s needs change—and with the help of Envisage’s support team, everything stays connected and up to speed, all in one system.
Many academies have taken advantage of online learning management systems (LMS) but don’t recognize their limitations as a training tool.
A centralized training management system (TMS) includes an LMS as just one part of its features, seamlessly connecting it to other considerations inherent to training coordination, like scheduling, budgeting, and recordkeeping for compliance.
The cost of implementing an integrated system should be considered alongside the resources used by traditional academies. The need for labor and equipment is reduced when just one system handles tasks on multiple fronts.
Perhaps most costly to a public safety agency—in terms of dollars, community relations, and staff morale—is high-profile litigation. If the time ever comes to produce evidence that your academy provided adequate training, you’ll want access to every relevant document in question.
With a properly integrated system, all academy documentation is accessible through standardized records, which follow a trainee throughout their career.
Posted on Jun 17, 2021
