November 4, 2024

Dear CLEOs and Continuing Education providers,

As you are all well-aware, the “business” of policing in Minnesota has undergone an immense amount of change over the last four years and we at POST have been subject to and part of that change. One of the areas where POST has had to adapt and change to meet new demands, expectations and legislation, is in the area peace officer continuing education (CE). The legislature has mandated new training hours and standards in new CE areas and POST has been charged with creating and upholding those standards by reviewing and vetting course applications.

POST now spends a great deal more time reviewing and approving individual courses while, at the same time, the number of courses submitted to POST has continued to increase. Needless to say, the existing POST business process for CE review is not adequate to the task. Paper applications, paper attendance records, back and forth emails and playing phone tag is not conducive to effectiveness or efficiency. Most importantly, the existing process is not user-friendly for you; and it is cumbersome for POST staff.

Consequently, I am making you aware that POST is currently working on a CE system that will be entirely online and accessible through the existing POST E-licensing portal. We anticipate that this will go live in early to mid-December so this is just a “heads up” for now.

Once deployed, the system will allow agencies and continuing education sponsors to submit course applications, view and manage approved courses and submit affidavits of attendance all electronically via the online portal. The design of the user interface will be intuitive with drop downs for various fields and a structured lesson plan format for mandatory learning objective courses. The online forms will also include internal validations to check for errors before submission, saving both time for the sponsor on the front end and for POST staff in the back office. The system will allow editing of course applications with feedback from POST staff and also facilitate agency submission of training reimbursement requests.

As the time for deployment of the new system approaches, POST will be hosting online training sessions, creating user guides and providing examples of course content to assist sponsors with the new process. While there will likely be bugs that have to be worked out after deployment, as there are with any project this size, we are excited to leverage technology in a way that will benefit you, your course or conference attendees and POST staff.

Stay tuned for future communication on this project from POST.

Sincerely,

Erik Misselt

Executive Director

Minnesota Board of Peace Officers and Standards Training