The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) Blueprint for Safer Campuses provides lessons learned and best practices that will reliably work during daily operations and, in particular, during events that threaten safety and security on college campuses. Twenty clear recommendations articulate processes, resources, methods and collaborations that are essential. Seventeen of these recommendations require multi-disciplinary collaboration for threat assessment, policy and procedure development, teaching and training, collaborative communication, emergency access to critical information, collaborative planning and practice, data collection, analysis and trending.
To the extent that our campus professions exist in rather complex institutions, we routinely navigate through organizations replete with silos of departments, committees, resources, capabilities and authority. Too often, the result of these silos is segregated solutions, resources and processes. Clearly, this can hamper us from reaching our objective, to form a highly functional, integrated and collaborative set of solutions. In addition, the challenges become greater given the broad range of resources available across our varied settings.
Integration and collaboration must be embraced to improve our methods and solutions. The following characteristics are essential for a solution to be both practical and effective in practice:
Solutions must be:
- Secure
- Accessible
- Controlled
- Versatile
- Comprehensive
- Useful in normal operations
- Intuitive in emergencies
Capabilities must integrate:
- Interdisciplinary communication and information sharing
- Access to all essential information
- Teaching and training
- Incident data capture, analysis, trending and reporting
- Professional networking and collaboration
Data Must Be Secure…
Solutions to these challenges will inherently rely on the creation, storage and retrieval of information. The methods and technologies associated with solutions must establish and maintain a level of security associated with the most stringent requirements for sensitive data storage and retrieval.
We are all aware of standards and requirements like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) and the Clery Act. Regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, as well as the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), now raise the bar on recording and reporting. They will serve to dictate a level of security not seen in past methods and solutions.