1. What unique challenges did the York regional police IT staff have to overcome?
The IT staff at the York Police Department were primarily responsible for maintaining, applying system updates and patches for the laptops of the York regional police force. The IT staff faced several challenges -
1. Managing over 200 laptops real-time in which the data, software and systems were not well synchronized.
2. They had to expand their range of work to various areas starting from the district headquarters to even streets, cars and boats.
“We had to stretch from within the [headquarters] walls out to district, and the streets, events, cars, and boats,” said Nick Mohamed, IT Assistant Manager for the department.
3.Working unknowingly trying to solve the same problems under the current system management process. “The internal IT department was suffering from a lack of cohesiveness,” said Mohamed.
4.The staff had difficulty in coping with the evolution of new technology in law enforcement and struggled to constantly integrate specific applications into the systems.
5.Much time was being wasted coordinating applications and running backups.
Reference- Smith, Briony, “Cops roll out remote patch updates, e-ticketing,” ITWorld Canada, November 29, 2007
2. How did Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager resolve the issues for the York regional police?
The York police installed a system management software called System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), 2007 in order to overcome the existing issues. The software resolved issues and provided many benefits to the force as well as the IT staff such as-
1. Providing remote access to notebooks to system administrators over the network to perform the tasks of system upgrades, patch management, software distribution, keeping hardware and software inventory.
2. Enabling saving of hundreds of working hours for the force by updating their PC’s wirelessly over the network.
3. SCCM resolved the...