Saratoga County, New York, Goes Live with Full Suite of Interoperable CentralSquare Public Safety Enterprise

Launch of Enterprise CAD, Mobile and RMS speeds emergency response across three counties by creating a tri-county network that results in shared visibility into mission-critical data, deeper response plans and cost savings for taxpayers

Lake Mary, Fla., March 5, 2019 — CentralSquare, a leader in public sector software, announced that the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office launched the full suite of CentralSquare Public Safety Enterprise (powered by Inform) on Friday, March 1. This launch connects Saratoga’s system with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office and Rensselaer County Bureau of Public Safety, both of whom are already using their CentralSquare systems. As a result, a community of nearly one million residents is served by a tri-county network of agencies that shares data in real time and on the same platform.

“CentralSquare is proud to partner with Saratoga County as they lead the transformation of public safety service for communities in upstate New York,” said Steve Seoane, executive vice president and general manager of public safety at CentralSquare. “Their launch of CentralSquare Public Safety Suite Enterprise creates a tri-county network that sets the new standard for how municipalities leverage broad, smart and unified systems to keep communities safe.”

Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo said, “I am proud to have worked collaboratively with our partners in Albany and Rensselaer counties, and of our team at the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office, who worked diligently over the past several years with the goal of improving public safety in the county. Our deputies are now safer on patrol because of this new software.”

In selecting CentralSquare 911, CAD, Mobile and Records, the three counties are leveraging the benefits of a common, unified system from a company with extensive experience in regional implementations. This collaboration results in better data-sharing capabilities, system redundancy and long- and short-term cost savings – benefits that will have lasting, positive impacts on public safety services and community safety. For example, the shared 911 and computer-aided dispatch software leads to faster, more coordinated response and ensures system redundancy. Should one county’s system go down, calls can be routed to one of the other counties for dispatch. Also, with shared data coordination across jurisdictions, each agency has greater insight into incidents that often cross county lines. Not only does the shared system lead to faster response and better coordination, it has the potential to deliver significant savings to taxpayers as agencies share the costs of maintaining fewer systems within the region.

“We now ensure that, in the event of a catastrophic issue, all three PSAPs are looking at the same dataset on the same system,” said Steven Gordon, director of emergency communications for the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office. “From the initial 911 call through dispatching responders to field operations, the connected systems will allow us to process calls faster and improve our communication and coordination.”

CentralSquare Public Safety Suite Enterprise is helping to place these counties at the forefront of public safety communications. For example, by implementing Records Enterprise, the first National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)-compliant system in New York, these agencies are ahead of the 2021 regulation mandate. Their use of smartphone apps such as Filed Ops will give them insight into calls for service through a map-based view of where emergency resources are located, helping ambulance districts to locate high-volume areas so they can proactively stage their resources. Additionally, by leveraging connections between their 911, CAD and Records systems, call takers will be able to use geographically informed visual cues, such as premise-related data, to identify duplicate calls and prioritize ringing 911 calls even before they are answered. And with nearly one out of every 12 calls that come in to the Saratoga call center resulting in a hang-up, having the ability to automatically send a text to validate whether the call was accidental will save the call center valuable time.

“Now that we’ve successfully deployed a regional system with everything from A-Z, we’re excited by the opportunity this gives New York, particularly the Capital Region, to enhance the safety of our communities,” added Gordon.