Bain Capital and Vista Equity Partners, two multi-billion-dollar private
equity firms, have just created a company providing software and
services for public safety and government management whose technology
touches roughly three-fourths of the U.S. population.
By merging TriTech Software Services, a technology provider to first
responders across the country; Superion, which sells emergency
management and back office software for government operations (including
billing and payments); and the public sector and healthcare businesses
of Aptean, Bain and Vista have created a juggernaut that dominates
public sector services, from policing to paying parking tickets, without
any government oversight.
However, many of the new technologies the company touts have come under
fire from some police departments and civil liberties advocates.
The new business, which will be run by Superion’s chief executive, Simon
Angove, will continue to offer the same suite of services it had in the
past, and will use a new, undisclosed infusion of equity and debt from
Bain and Vista to develop new products and services to bring to market.
In all, the revenue of the combined company will be roughly $400
million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.
About two-thirds of the revenue of the combined companies will come from
providing software and services to public safety departments, like
police, fire and emergency services.
In an interview, Angove touted the benefits of consolidating the
operations of the three businesses. “This puts us in a great position in
5,500 communities… across America,” says Angove. “Three out of every
four citizens are protected by this software.”
With the consolidation of the businesses, Angove says that police
departments will be able to share information across jurisdictions.
“We have a much larger data set that we can mine for criminal patterns,”
says Angove. “[And] the ability to share dispatch across jurisdictional
areas. We have the opportunity to reduce the time it takes to respond
to an emergency. We have the ability to hand off that dispatch.”
In a statement, the company said that the public safety business will
focus on integrating devices that detect active shooters with emergency
response systems; forecasting and preventing crimes through smarter
patrolling; and advancing analytics that help measure and improve public
safety.
Photo: bjdlzx/Getty Images
That kind of future-forward, technology-centric policing was rejected in
Oakland and is under review in other cities around the country, due to
concerns about the utility of the algorithms and concerns over
institutionalizing bias through faulty technology.
“Maybe we could reduce crime more by using predictive policing, but the
unintended consequences [are] even more damaging… and it’s just not
worth it,” Tim Birch, the head of resource and planning for the Oakland
Police Department, told Motherboard in a 2016 interview about software
vendor PredPol, another provider of predictive analytics to police
departments.
And some studies indicate that the use of big data analytics in policing
is inherently biased. Other, newer, technologies focused on public
safety — like facial recognition technologies — suffer from similar
problems.
If the consolidation of public safety services around a vendor that’s
trying to bring more data and analytics tools to police departments when
the efficacy of those tools is questionable is concerning, then the
fact that the company is going to provide back end services to
government agencies may be even more so.
In October 2017, Superion disclosed a data breach at one of their
subsidiary businesses, Click2Gov, which affected thousands of customers
in Wellington, Fla.
For one advocate working on integrating technology into public service,
the data breach is a red flag that should have some municipalities on
notice… and raise concerns about the consolidation among vendors in the
market.
“The consolidation of these companies could cause concern,” the person
said. “It’s the larger question of businesses in general and from the
data and what they’re going to do with that. The security breach
question is one that’s most concerning… What are they doing to ensure
that it doesn’t become a larger problem?”
Superion didn’t comment on the data breach directly, but in an email
response a spokesperson wrote that, “[protecting] our customers’ and
their clients’ data is of the utmost importance to us.”
Elaborating on the company’s security practice the spokesperson continued, writing:
We are deploying the latest technologies with advanced real-time
monitoring. For example, we don’t simply use applications to monitor our
client data but use advanced threat protection and analytics to
continually update and refine our data protection process – both
in-transit and at rest. Further, we’re proactively moving toward a
cloud-first strategy and leading the public sector to moving their data
from disparate on-premise networks to highly secure, defense in-depth
(i.e. multiple layers) cloud environments. Additionally, through
training and education of staff, as well as ongoing monitoring and
development of our corporate governance programs, we focus on
preventative security measures, and we maintain industry-standard,
client-specific regulatory compliance certifications.
While adopting technology in an effort to improve efficiency in
government is, indubitably, something that states, cities and the
federal government should be striving for, the consolidation of so many
vital services in a single company should give regulators some pause. As
should the consolidation of so much data within a company that serves
two distinct functions within government. There’s a risk that
information given to one could bleed over to be used or accessed
improperly by another.
“We do not sell or share any data,” a spokesperson for the company said
when asked about the potential for data leakage between the different
business units. “Any data sharing is done only between police
departments and regulated by specific and state and federal laws.
Typically everyone who accesses any data about public safety needs to be
certified by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division
and/or has received clearance from law enforcement agencies.”
https://www.geezgo.com/sps/32113
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Jul 24, 2018

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Two private equity firms just created the largest private provider of public safety services in the US
Two private equity firms just created the largest private provider of public safety services in the US
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