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ISYS and the US Federal Bureau of Prisons

No statement in this story is intended to represent an endorsement of ISYS Search Software and/or the ISYS products by the United States Department of Justice or by Omar Herran's office.

With approximately 30,000 staff in over 90 institutions to keep informed of policies and procedures, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons disseminates information in a timely and cost-effective fashion with ISYS:web.

The Bureau is a policy driven agency. "Policies and procedures ensure the safety of staff, inmates and the public," says Omar Herran in the Policy and Public Affairs Division. The Bureau produces thousands of pages per year, laying out federal policy on the operation and maintenance of prisons.

Before developing an intranet, the Bureau used ISYS as far back as 1992 to help distribute information. It was then that the Bureau decided that they needed a cost effective and convenient method for distributing policy information. BOPDOCS (Bureau of Prisons Documents), a CD of policy information, was the result. An essential requirement of BOPDOCS was a search facility that enabled readers to find specific information simply and quickly - so the Bureau purchased ISYS.

With policies and forms available on CD, staff were better able to access and act upon information. It reduced staff research time and employees no longer needed to remember policy by chapter or section, they simply entered a query to jump to the information they needed.

The information on BOPDOCS outgrew its CD format, so the Bureau expanded the operation to its 'BOPNET' intranet. All of the policy documents since 1992 were in WordPerfect format, and rather than spend months converting these documents to HTML, they used ISYS:web, which converts files to HTML on-the-fly without altering the original.

Since its launch in January 2000, the information on BOPNET has grown from 600MB to around 2.5GB. BOPNET is available to thousands of Bureau PCs and initial testing showed that it easily handled 22 transactions per second. "We were very surprised at the capability of ISYS:web. One PC with ISYS:web is able to support the nationwide requirements for information access," said Herran.

Herran conservatively estimates that since 1993, the Bureau has saved more than $4 million in reproducing the policy forms alone. There has also been significant savings in terms of the time and effort of staff.