Montana POST Leverages Acadis to Improve Certification and Training Compliance Processes

The Challenge

The Montana Public Safety Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council plays a critical role in ensuring that more than 5,000 public safety professionals across the state are properly trained, certified, and compliant with established standards.  Montana POST creates and maintains records of every public safety officer’s employment, training, certifications, and education, along with any complaints that may be reported, all of which are maintained in officer transcripts.

With a staff of only one part-time and four full-time employees, Montana POST covers a lot of responsibilities to ensure that a professional and compliant public safety workforce serves its communities in the state. In 2024, according to the latest Montana POST statistics from January 2025, this small staff completed the following:

• Sent out 875 individual officer transcripts in response to requests from prospective employers, investigators, agencies, and individuals.
• Issued a total of 980 certificates, which included validating specific training and experience requirements for each certificate type.
• Approved 2,090 courses for POST Continued Professional Training Credit Hours and recorded 8,164 completed POST-approved courses—totaling 262,270 POST Training Credit Hours.
• Processed 50 equivalency requests for peace officers or detention/corrections officers coming to work in Montana.
• Investigated 54 officer allegation cases.

Prior to Acadis, POST relied on legacy systems and paper-based processes that created operational inefficiencies and limited staff visibility into real-time training compliance and officer transcript information. Staff managed records across manual workflows that required redundant data entry, physical documentation, and time-consuming approval routing processes.

Key challenges included:

• Heavy reliance on paper records: POST maintained officer files dating back to the 1970s in filing cabinets, creating storage and retrieval challenges.
• Duplicate data entry and long processing turnaround time: Every employment change (i.e. new hire, transfer, termination) for the 5,000+ agencies in Montana required manual submission into a webform, printing out the webform and mailing it to POST; then POST staff would have to re-enter the data into a program.
• Slow training approvals: Course approvals and documentation review could take weeks or longer due to manual routing and paper-based processes.
• Audit complexity: Tracking compliance and validating officer training required significant effort due to fragmented systems and paper-based records

Like many agencies operating with outdated systems, these challenges made it difficult to efficiently ensure compliance, maintain easily accessible officer records, and support agencies across the state.

The Choice

To modernize operations and improve statewide certification and training compliance processes, Montana POST implemented Acadis as a centralized platform to manage officer employment, certification, and training compliance records.

POST selected Acadis to:

• Create a single system of record for officer employment, certifications, training compliance, and transcripts
• Digitize and eliminate paper-based workflows and save administrative time
• Enable self-service access for officers and local agencies through the Acadis Portal
• Streamline training approvals and submissions for required training
• Support compliance tracking and audit readiness

The platform also allowed POST to collaborate more effectively with partner agencies, including the Montana Law Enforcement Academy, by sharing access to a centralized system for academy operations and officer employment records and transcripts.

The Change

With Acadis, Montana POST has transformed how it manages training, certification, and compliance across the state.

Centralized, Digital Officer Records

Acadis now serves as the authoritative system for all officer data, including employment, certifications, required continued professional training, and officer transcripts. This shift eliminated paper files and created a fully digital environment for managing records, while also enabling the small staff to save time and improve real-time access to the information they manage.

The Results

By implementing Acadis, Montana POST has strengthened its ability to oversee training and certification across a diverse, statewide public safety workforce.

Key outcomes include:

• Fully paperless operations
  By transitioning from decades of physical records to a digital system that eliminates duplicate data entry and manual processes, POST staff now “only do things once,” freeing time to focus on other priorities.
• Faster, more efficient processes
  Access to a secure portal and a centralized system enables agencies to update officer employment status, submit training requests and rosters, and apply for certifications and advanced credentials online—significantly reducing administrative overhead and shortening approval timelines from weeks to just days.
• Statewide visibility into officer readiness
  All 5,000+ public safety officers in Montana now have access to their training records which provides real-time visibility into officer readiness and greater transparency for agencies and leadership
• Improved collaboration
  Acadis has helped improve coordination between POST and training partners, as well enhances coordination between POST and the Montana Law Enforcement Academy.
• Stronger compliance and audit readiness
  With training records, certifications, training approvals, and documentation stored in a centralized system, POST can more efficiently conduct officer audits, validate training compliance, and respond to information requests.

Today, Acadis provides Montana POST with a single, trusted system to manage officer training and certification, enabling the organization to operate more efficiently, improve transparency, and uphold the highest standards of professionalism across the state’s public safety community.