IT Division Director Dean Gialamas began the project in 2015 as an idea when he was the chief information officer.
"While attending a state sheriffs' IT meeting in November last year, I discovered a vendor who did app development for law enforcement agencies. Since then, we made it a priority and have been working on this and it finally launched in May," Gialamas told Techwire.
The app cost less than $10,000 and is meant to help connect and inform county residents. A crime-mapping component is included, based on an open-data initiative.
"We have data and analytics from our most used links and pages of our websites and we used that to populate the icons available on the app today. In later versions, we will look at an internal use for employees in the department," Gialamas said.
More than 80 percent of the traffic on the public website is from residents trying to find people in custody.
"Demographically, most of our residents don’t have a home computer and use their smartphone for Internet access. We simplified that high traffic process by adding that to our app," Gialamas said.
Prospective employees can even apply through the app. Gialamas plans for more internal uses.
"As far as internal uses, we have not begun that journey but what we’d like to create is an ability for each unit to create their own icons for events, announcements and other non-mission-critical communications," he said. "It would be a social tool to connect employees at one facility or work location with the events going on."
The vendor, Apex Mobile, works with more than 30 California first-responder agencies. App platforms are customized to each agency's needs, which could affect cost.
"Certain customization requests may be priced separately," Apex Mobile founder and CEO Joe Ramirez told Techwire, "but, to date, I’d say 90 percent of our clients fall under our standard product."
