James Hand was previously employed at a software company in North Carolina. The company specialized in the development, sales, and support of all software (and sometimes hardware) products for law enforcement and emergency response organizations.
Over a period of time the company clients grew from a select group of small, local jurisdictions to a nationwide operation with clients as large as Orange County, California. The operating platforms included all versions of Windows (from 3.0 to current, including NT). The GUI was built using Delphi, and SQL was used on the back-end. The original product was built using MS DOS and newer builds gradually displaced the DOS versions. All later versions of the software were client-server oriented, with the core software and SQL running on the server and the client-side application running on an unlimited (licensed) amount of workstations.
The main software product originated with a simple records management system (in DOS), and grew from there. Later products included an entire suite with "pluggable" modules. Major products within the "software suite" included:
° Records Management System (RMS)- criminal history, aliases, scars-marks-tattoos (SMT), be-on-the-lookouts (BOLOS) etc.
° Jail- location, commissary, social services, medical, etc.
° Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)- recording incoming calls, dispatch, resolution, etc.
° Mobile
° Magistrates- warrants, orders-of-protection, etc.
° Fire- dispatch, inspections, etc.
° EMS
° Nation Crime Information Center (NCIC) Interface
During his employment with VisionAIR, James Hand was assigned to three positions:
1) Software Developer,
2) Network Engineer, and
3) Customer Support Technician
The most recent position James Hand held with the company was in the Research and Development (R&D) section of Software Development. His team in R&D consisted of five members: one Front-End Designer, one Data Base Administrator (DBA), two General Programmers, and one permanent intern. James Hand served as the "front-end" designer. During his time with the group, they were responsible for two major projects:
1) Redesigning the company RMS software to make criminal records accessible via web browser with no client-side software.
2) Designing a browser interface to NCIC. This previously required a dedicated workstation supplied by the federal government.
For both projects, the actual design and implementation plans were a major part of the effort rather than a straight production schedule. User-friendliness was a primary design concern. This was flowcharted and constantly modified. The group was encouraged to use emergent technologies and given leeway as far as implementation techniques and timelines. James Hand's contribution to these efforts consisted of designing and building all displays required for these and other development projects.
James Hand also held a key position in the Internet/Intranet Department. The internet section consisted of the company?s main website and a few sites hosted for law enforcement clients. The intranet section consisted of all on-site and VPN-connected employees. There were four major aspects to this position as follows:
1) Physical Integrity
2) Data Integrity
3) Technical Support
4) Development Physical Integrity included ensuring that all of the network equipment and software was secure. This consisted of a locked, temperature and humidity controlled server room with about 30 servers and related equipment. James Hand was provided with pager and 24/7 support was implemented. James resolved air conditioning, power problems, hardware problems, software upgrades, complete shut downs (during storms and hurricanes), T1 connectivity, and any other issue related to the Internet/Intranet equipment. Data Integrity involved ensuring that all data was secure, properly accessed, properly stored, and backed up on a regular basis. The types of data included non-sensitive, sensitive, and "management-eyes-only". James Hand's daily responsibilities included document and file management, establishing and maintaining permissions, setting shares, etc., to control access to all documents. He was also was responsible for all data backups, automated and manual, data retrieval, and storage of backup media. Technical Support was provided for all users of the company internet and intranet. Assisted in the development of a Call Tracking system that was used to document and track issues. I was directly responsible for making sure that every single issue was completely resolved and the calls were all closed. The calls included everyday routine tasks such as adding and deleting network users, configuring email, doing basic workstation troubleshooting, etc. Advanced tasks sometimes required installing and configuring equipment, working directly with service providers, and escalating calls when necessary. Development was done in the creation of a scalable, marketable, intranet solution that could be used in-house at Vision, as well as be sold to jurisdictions of various sizes. The product was called INFORM and it was a full intranet solution with various features, tools, and applications based on the need for rapid distribution of data between different departments and individuals. James Hand developed the "front-end" of INFORM, focusing on ease of use. Specific consideration was paid to navigation, intuitiveness, simplicity, and standardization of operational procedures.
INFORM was developed based solely on user input from the Vision Software intranet users and form a select number of law enforcement agencies that were given "beta" versions for testing. Additional development work involved updating and maintaining the main website for the company and building Vision-hosted web sites for a select number of clients.
Support Technician- VisionAIR (formerly Vision Software)- Castle Hayne, NC
This position required James Hand to interface directly with customers to resolve all software issues. Incoming calls were via phone and were entered into a call queue (actually Vision CAD software, for simplicity). The requirement was to troubleshoot every problem and resolve every issue with all of the company software products. A variety of remote connectivity software was utilized. The software used to connect varied depending on what the site had installed (i.e. Close Up, Commute, PCAnywhere, NT RAS) over time and operating system. We were given the responsibility to connect to various jurisdiction's networks and computers nationwide and dealing with live, real-time data, including criminal records, inmate records, etc. A lot of the calls were simply user training issues and were rapidly resolved.
A lot of the calls resulted from corrupt databases and were caused by lack of input validation, and improper shutdowns. Calls were escalated as needed and in a worst case scenario, arrangements were made for a tech to travel to the site as soon as possible.
One secondary responsibility was Quality Assurance testing of the progressive builds to the basic company software. Therefore some of the builds were tested in Support, some support employees were assigned to QA temporarily. And sometimes, Support went on-site to install and test builds using "live" data.
Another secondary responsibility was to develop the first troubleshooting database for the company. Fixes for numerous problems were documented and stored as closed calls were analyzed.
VisionAIR- Working the help desks on the night/morning of the 2000 rollover. We only had a staff of two people that night. Everyone else had taken the night off, because they knew it was going to be a nightmare. Some of the company software was still DOS. Clients were calling in yelling, screaming, cursing, and refusing to cooperate. We ended up so busy that I couldn't pick up the phone anymore. My coworker ended up just answering calls, jotting down their info, and telling them that we would call back. I spent all night running software patches remotely. By the time the day crew came in it was all over without a single complaint.
VisionAIR- we were attempting to repair a serverly corrupt database. Different techs had tried to fix it for days. Every time they tried to index it, it would do a couple of thousand records and then just halt. This went on for days. Finally I got the idea that what we were trying to do would never happen. The database was so large, and the jurisdiction's computers so slow that it could not get done. What we did was choose the best workstation that we had, down load the database onto that computer go into our tools and choose an older compatible version of FoxPro, and index it that way. We found the bad data, deleted it all, uploaded the database back to the server at their site, and it worked fine.
VisionAIR- A jail in Wilson, NC kept calling in that their systems crashed continually. We did not dispatch a field tech because they did not have a full support contract. One night the Warden called one of the company officers at home and threatened to drop our product. My supervisor called me at work and said that even though he knew I was not a field tech, he needed me to drive up to the jail and to see what was happening. When I got there I saw that the servers were in a boiler room. The temperature was at least 100 degrees. I could not even work in the room. I stayed all night and talked with the assistant warden the next day. They agreed to buy newer machines (from us) and put them in a proper location.
