Corvus is our award winning, patented framework and platform for delivering great solutions. Corvus provides core capabilities to almost all of our solutions across desktop and mobile. But Corvus isn’t a big, disruptive change – and that’s the really big difference for Police IT.

Go Beyond the RMS with Corvus – fast, flexible, powerful

The Record Management System (RMS) is a well known mainstay for Police IT. Your Force will also have a number of specialist systems, for example serving Forensics disciplines, HR, administrative systems, Command & Control (C&C) etc. Every Force is different, leading to a need for configurable and customised IT, but making custom changes to mission critical systems like the RMS can be disruptive, expensive, and risky for day-to-day police operations, with a wholesale change in RMS itself being an especially thorny proposition.

Corvus opens up the possibility for Police Forces to solve more problems with innovative IT, while avoiding high risk changes. Here’s how:

1. Start small, light, fast

Corvus can be used as a basis for individual targeted solutions, in support of your core RMS. Although the Corvus Operational Data Store is capable of integrating data from a wide variety of sources, there might be no compelling driver or budget to engage with a large integration project. Perhaps you came to this website looking to solve one specific problem, for example reporting; pressure on estate costs; swamped resources dealing with vulnerability referrals; the adoption of AI… Read about our approach to bespoke and customised solutions including agile collaboration with our customers. Whatever capability you’re looking for, our rapid delivery model gives you a compelling alternative.

2. Seamlessly grow without disruption

Corvus can grow to fulfil its maximum value as an integration point, bringing together data from across the organisation – serving day-to-day operations alongside strategic decisions, while also delivering management information. By providing more data sources to Corvus, the benefits increase exponentially across desktop and mobile platforms and at all levels of the organisation. For some examples, see Data Warehousing, Single Enterprise View and Briefing & Tasking.

Enhance your IT

Corvus is different, because it works with your existing systems, supporting for example an agile developed ‘point solution’ while gradually building a foundation for delivering strategic aims. It is typical to start with a data feed from your existing RMS system – and we have expertise in integrating with the three leading RMS solutions currently being used in UK Policing. By combining data from multiple sources, then optimising and indexing, Corvus gives you the Single Enterprise View and the freedom to do so much more with your data. The following diagram gives a high-level overview:

Core Capabilities

AI

Strictly speaking our AI acumen is targeted at specific application areas solving specific problems. However, as an organisation we have evolved an enviable competency with AI over several years, and we use this in combination with Corvus data and the facilities of the Corvus platform. You can read more about our AI solutions here.

Audit

Advanced auditing is supported, where every user action is recorded. In addition to recording what the user does, the auditing framework captures the data at the time the action took place. Hidden audit groups are supported, so the auditors can follow a user’s actions through the system, without leaving a trace for a normal user to follow. Auditor actions are still audited, but only other auditors can see them.

Configuration

Corvus provides an advanced configuration engine which can tailor the way each application operates. This is also linked into the Security Engine, meaning that different user profiles can have very different views of the same application – each one geared to the users specific job role. The configuration system means that each Bluestar application can be changed to exactly fit your requirements. It’s possible for the same application to be unrecognisable between different customer installations!

High Availability

The Corvus platform is built to support a highly available, ‘shared nothing’ architecture, with redundancy built-in at every level. In the event of hardware failure, Corvus automatically switches to secondary nodes in order to avoid interruption to the service. The system can be deployed on 1 or 100 servers allowing capacity to expand as usage changes. An internal data organisation engine means there is no need for all servers to hold all the data. For on-prem solutions, as hardware ages it can be placed into different roles allowing the maximum return on original investment.

Data Warehousing & Systems Integration

Corvus comes with a framework for loading data from other systems. This framework makes Corvus the extensible data warehouse that it is, allowing vast quantities of data to be loaded from a huge selection of sources. Corvus can happily load data from any SQL compliant database, CSV files, XML files, Word documents, PDF documents, web services, custom binary formats and many more. The load processes are so simple, many of our customers find they need to justify to their users why data is not in Corvus, rather than why it is! We also create bespoke data source integrations to pull-in data from key systems – for example RMS and C&C – with configurable rates from e.g. daily to near real-time.

Desktop

When we say ‘desktop’ we mean web-app running on a desktop browser. Long gone are the days of expensive thick clients. Our Corvus desktop solutions have a common look and feel and are accessible from a single entry point.

Digital Assets

Complementing the Corvus Operational Data Store, our support for Digital Asset Management lets you keep digital assets in their original location, indexing them centrally. You can read more here.

Mobile

Our mobile solutions are custom crafted for the needs of frontline officers but surface common facilities like the Single Enterprise View. You can read more about our mobile solutions here.

Reports

Corvus comes with a set of reports that use the raft of data in the Corvus Operational Data Store. Customers can also configure their own queries and use an extensive range of tools for customised reports. You can read more here.

Security

The Corvus platform provides a comprehensive and extensible security module with an advanced configuration engine allowing Corvus applications to be tailored to each customer’s precise requirements, while still remaining a secure system. The flexible security engine provides a very fine graded set of permissions on each application. These can be managed internally within Corvus, or they can be mapped on to your existing user repository or HR system (for example Active Directory) so all your user access controls can be managed in one place. Record-level and attribute-level access controls can both be applied, allowing sensitive data to be hidden from the general user community, without the need for separate record and search functions.

Self Monitoring & Alerting

Corvus has a monitoring engine built in. This means that Corvus monitors the status of its own background jobs and will report failures automatically. Bluestar provides an array of background jobs which enable the automatic collection of data from source systems – providing management information, generating reports and much much more. Rather than having a requirement to check these jobs on a daily basis Corvus can email you directly if there are problems or exceptions. Corvus even monitors its own hardware, raising alerts when disk space is running low or if there appears to be a hardware problem.

Single Enterprise View

Corvus is at its most powerful when built on a foundation of data integrated from across the organisation. Corvus allows you to build a Single Enterprise View of all the enterprise knowledge. For example, providing a daily briefing makes the most sense when you have a wide range of relevant information available. Read more about the benefits of Single Enterprise View here.

Usability

The Corvus platform provides a reusable set of user interface components that we use in the majority of our applications, giving a consistent look and feel, while also helping us to deliver new functionality rapidly. This applies equally to web-app ‘desktop’ applications and mobile capabilities.