The Phoenix Police Department needed to coordinate real-time situational awareness across numerous local, state, and federal law enforcement and first responder organizations to support security and incident response activities during Super Bowl LVII in February 2023.

The police force wanted to use the TAK application that is widely used among law enforcement and first response officials. But the department also needed a platform to manage the critical backend aspects of a large TAK deployment: security, user onboarding and access, integrations with third-party systems, resource provisioning to align with demand fluctuations, system backup and recovery, and more.

A TAK is typically downloaded to users’ phones or laptops, allowing them to quickly generate and share multiple types of tactical data—including situational maps, imagery, video, and text—across multiple users to achieve shared tactical awareness.

Initially, the Phoenix Police Department tried a free, government-off-the-shelf platform called TAK Server to control and manage TAK applications. However, with TAK Server, organizations must manage these backend functions themselves. The department needed faster, better management of situational awareness.

That’s why the Phoenix Police Department turned to Booz Allen Sit(x)® tool.

The Sit(x)® platform is a TAK-platform-as-a-service that runs on AWS GovCloud. It dramatically simplifies TAK system deployment and management. The Sit(x)®  platform enables seamless, real-time collaboration across mobile and desktop devices, and federates users across organizational boundaries securely.

Although the Phoenix police had used the Sit(x)® platform in pilot deployments before, the Super Bowl was the department’s first large-scale use of the Sit(x)® platform. The department set up the Sit(x)® platform in just 30 minutes. And it was able to rapidly and securely onboard team participants from a half-dozen law enforcement organizations—including federal agencies—to start providing real-time dissemination of tactical updates.

With the Sit(x)® platform’s easy-to-configure third-party integrations, the Phoenix Police Department was able to provide its TAK users with live aerial drone video streaming and daily satellite imagery.

Importantly, the department was able to manage TAK content and control at the edge. To do so, the Sit(x)® platform relies on usernames and passwords rather than certificates, which are more easily shared and can therefore diminish integrity in user accounts.

The Sit(x)® platform also proved far less expensive than other alternatives. The Phoenix Police Department did not need to invest in server hardware or a full-time system administrator. Moreover, Booz Allen maintained the system, kept it updated, and provided 24/7 support.

Another factor that contributed to cost savings: the platform’s highly elastic architecture. This enabled the department to rapidly scale up IT resources for the event and scale them down immediately afterward. The Sit(x)® platform typically costs between one-third and one-tenth of a do-it-yourself approach because so little work is required for backend operations.

Thanks to the Sit(x)® platform, the Phoenix Police Department was able to prepare for and manage security for the Big Game with a clear, complete, real-time situational picture. And officers were able to adapt easily to unexpected real-time needs as they arose without requiring extra manual labor and system expertise.

The Sit(x)® platform relies on three critical AWS services:

Elastic Beanstalk, which scales computing resources automatically based on demand, ensuring elasticity and cost control. User organizations upload the TAK application and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, scaling, and application health monitoring.

CloudWatch, which delivers continuous monitoring and security oversight to detect and mitigate threats. It can also assist with any auditing requirements by tracking all security-related activities.

EC2, which provides the resilient compute environment that powers the Sit(x)® platform.