As preparations for the London 2012 Olympics are underway, recent events including Occupy Wall Street and the St. Paul’s anti-capitalist protestors in London, the UK riots, the Arab Spring, and natural disasters such as the flooding in Thailand or earthquakes in Turkey, have city officials hypersensitive on how best to protect their metropolis, people and businesses.
Coupled with the current economic conditions in the UK – Bloomberg recently highlighted that Britain’s deficit alone is expected to result in more than 300,000 government jobs eliminated by 2015 – the public sector is challenged to do more with less.
While this mantra is embraced by many sectors as global markets recover, the public sector in the UK has little budget to dedicate to new projects due to a freeze on new capital expenses.
Working within a cash-strapped environment, the benefits of PSIM for the public sector would not only improve the safety and security of the community, but from a financial perspective, it would allow government agencies to maximize their existing security investments by improving how intelligence is collected, analyzed and shared with other organizations, agencies and first-responders.
Maximising existing security investments
Current security systems and infrastructures are getting older and more expensive to maintain. Additionally, public agencies are faced with annual upgrades, ultimately creating an endless stream of device integrations and costly support challenges.
Instead of investing in new, bespoke solutions that integrate with a subset of systems for one agency at a time, PSIM can benefit cash-strapped public agencies because the technology enables organizations to harness the data from existing investments, integrating all of their disparate technologies and assembling actionable intelligence from it all.
PSIM pools data from these disparate sources into a single operating picture, and beyond leveraging data from existing technologies, PSIM also enables a public agency to share with other agencies when appropriate.
With PSIM, this one complete view enables the right people to access the right information at the right time to ensure the fastest and most efficient, and cost-effective response.
Protecting the president: PSIM in use in the public sector
During the recent celebration of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC, the District was faced with the extraordinary demands of providing top-level security to protect United States’ President Obama, other government officials and dignitaries, and tens of thousands of visitors.
By leveraging technology and security investments already in place, including a PSIM system, the United States Park Police was able to tap into a variety of data sources for real-time intelligence from Washington, DC’s multiple agency systems and devices.
The PSIM technology in place enabled the USPP to leverage its existing cameras, devices and systems to obtain one complete view of a situation across the National Memorial area.
As a result, they could more easily distribute information to first responders and collaborate with other agencies in real-time for improved situation management.
Whether it’s managing the high volume of activity expected during a major event, like a presidential ceremony or the Olympic Games, or managing responses around a natural disaster, PSIM enables multiple agencies to more quickly and cost-efficiently identify and verify situations and work together for a faster, more coordinated response.
More importantly, PSIM enables public agencies to not compromise on safety and security when budgets are tight and, in some cases shrinking,by empowering them to maximize their existing technology and security resources for optimum responsetime and protection.
