City of Charlotte

Video Management System (VMS) Study

Charlotte, NC

Faith Group developed a video management system (VMS) study and centralized management strategy involving multiple partner departments in the City of Charlotte including the Police, Department of Transportation, Water, Government Services, and Transportation Authority, along with several external partners (colleges, surrounding county law enforcement) and departments (airport, housing authority, parks and recreation).

The City’s various departments have diverse levels of public interface along with different goals and missions. Faith Group worked with the City to devise a coordinated plan to unify their VMS platform through a series of recommendations that included network bandwidth needs, camera upgrades, and replacing older equipment, along with camera views, roles, and responsibilities for secured access. The design of these systems and the way they hold the data directory reflect their business objectives, which led to a federated approach to foster managed independence within the system architecture.

This approach allowed for retention and equality policies to vary across the City but still share information and efficiencies across licensing. To ensure the strategy was adopted and effectively executed, a governance body was organized to ensure equal representation and continued evaluation of needs over time for the converged VMS platform. Additionally, Faith Group conducted studies on current general statutes, public/private partnerships, and correlating laws and regulations pertaining to the sharing of video/audio information to guide developing inter-departmental procedures and directives.

“By standardizing on a single technology platform, we are now able to successfully share video and content between systems and entities across disparate geographical locations with ease.” – Crystal Cody, Charlotte Public Safety Technology Director