Excerpts
from a column by Elizabeth Dinan Remarkable claims about its software for community corrections and drug-testing operations are coming out of the Sageful Corp. The Concord company boasts its Attendee Information Manager (AIM) product saves money, enhances efficiency, increases timeliness, frees staff, automates time-consuming tasks, prevents important details from slipping through cracks and accelerates flow of critical information.
Those assertions come in the first three paragraphs of a Sageful release announcing that the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department has joined Worcester County in adopting AIM for managing information within the corrections department’s drug and alcohol programs. And it’s not difficult to believe Sageful’s AIM product can do all that. …
Sageful points out improvements it’s made in Worcester County, meanwhile, highlighting former shortcomings. A published case study of Worcester County’s program for an average of 600 to 800 low-level offenders at a time shows, among other things, that paper reports were “less informative than desired” and “frequently in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The case study says the department “was drowning in paperwork,” that “important indicators of impending problems were sometimes overlooked,” trends were difficult to spot, and instructors were “charging overtime or calling in sick to handle paperwork.”
It’s a snapshot of a state program Loris charitably says doesn’t indicate incompetence or slacking but rather an overworked and under-funded system. Whatever was causing all those cracks that things were slipping through, it’s Loris’ ticket in the door.
Once in, he can demonstrate how, when AIM is up and running, instant alerts notify corrections managers across the department when, for example, a client fails to show up for or fails a drug test. It will automatically generate random drug testing schedules, track the history of all drug test takers and allow managers to increase or decrease frequency of tests.
Drug test samples are tracked with the technology from collection through analysis, with date and time stamps, digital signatures and bar coded specimen cups. All of the information is collected and stored in the AIM database, accessible to employees throughout the department, while responsible parties are alerted and required to acknowledge receipt of certain information. …
Asked to explain further, Loris says Sageful’s software offers up-to-the-minute information about all clients in a particular program. This, he says, allows program managers to punish quickly those who fail to meet obligations and reward those who succeed. He likens it to parenting, explaining that the real-time AIM information informs program administrators within 15 seconds if so-and-so failed a drug test, so punishment can be swift and therefore effective. …
Worcester County assistant deputy superintendent Edward Quinn is charged with that county’s
drug and alcohol programs and says AIM “does everything it’s supposed to do” in terms of
managing the programs’ flow of information. |
