CALEA recognizes that in order to maintain its commitment to excellence, a continual review of its processes is conducted. The accreditation process is considered an essential management model that guides public safety agencies through organizational growth, challenges, and change. The accreditation process is not to be viewed as an event that occurs once every review cycle; rather, as an on-going, quality performance review of the agency. A successful reaccreditation is contingent upon the agency's ability to demonstrate continued compliance with applicable standards. This is accomplished by providing consistent accreditation maintenance, tracking agency performance, and identifying changes to agency procedures. For those tenured agencies that have a long-standing knowledge of the process, historically this was viewed with a beginning and end of an “accreditation cycle”, with the site-based assessment representing the end and then beginning a new “cycle” with the beginning of the next assessment. The Continued Compliance process encourages agencies to approach the web-based assessment and the site-based assessment as a point in time rather than a deadline. To this end, any agency awarded after January 2021 must follow the CALEA Best Practices, now requiring agencies to copy all attachments to their next assessment, always providing 4 years of documentation of compliance and in accordance with Appendix G. Updates to CALEA’s Guide to Successful Accreditation Management will be made in the coming weeks.
Questions may be directed to Regional Program Managers.