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Workflow Management: Key to Efficient Legal Warrant Processing

To fulfil legal obligations, telecommunication network operators are obliged to handle legal warrants for lawful intercepts and lawful disclosure requests. With increasing numbers of warrants and the use of electronic handover interfaces, network operators may come in a situation where they feel that they are losing control over the process.

Date August 16, 20244
Author Marcel Hylkema
Read 5 Min

To fulfil legal obligations, telecommunication network operators are obliged to handle legal warrants for lawful intercepts and lawful disclosure requests. With increasing numbers of warrants and the use of electronic handover interfaces, network operators may come in a situation where they feel that they are losing control over the process. A Workflow Management Tool may assist them in this process and help them to get back into operation whilst cover and log all the steps in the process for compliance and audit purposes.

LIMA Workflow Management tooling would ideally assist the user in the process of validating warrants, creating the interception and/or disclosure requests, and handling disclosed results. In addition, a record would be kept for the handled tasks and requests, and all associated documents will be stored with the requests.

 

Features for different Purposes

As companies and processes within companies differ, the exact implementation of the process would need to be attuned to the customer’s process flow to reflect the required working method. LIMA Workflow Tooling is designed for this purpose and support the following features:

  • Implements customer-specific process flows, ensuring that your work method is covered and potentially optimized.
  • Associated documents are stored with and accessible from the request, assuring your compliance.
  • Provides tracing: who handled a task and when.
  • Keeps track of task and request handling times with respect to the SLA.
  • Provides a TODO list with new and follow-up tasks for the logged-in user.
  • Assists in handling requests by pre-populating parameter fields and providing easy access to the legal warrant documents.
  • Provides a dashboard that indicates workload and adherence to the SLA.
  • Provides management reporting about the requests handled in relation to the SLA.

Benefits of LIMA Workflow Management

LIMA Workflow Management tooling can provide benefits in regulatory environments where the separation of concerns is required:

e.g. where the Legal Authorities enter the warrant and the provider validates the warrant and handles the request (i.e. implement four-eyes principle). This may apply to environments where warrants are electronically transferred but also to environments where warrants are entered manually.

In an environment where requests are handled manually, a workflow management tool may benefit from keeping associated documents together, monitoring the timelines, and keeping an auditable record. The process flow is guarded as tasks are created automatically for each user action in the flow.

When using an electronic handover of warrants, a workflow management tool will automatically create the initial task and add this to the TODO list. The received warrant document is associated with and accessible from the task and warrant parameters may be entered automatically when these are available in the handover protocol. Tasks are created automatically for each step that requires user attention.

Group 2000‘s LIMA Workflow Management is an add-on on the LIMA Lawful Intercept and LIMA Disclosure Management user interface that address the above needs and assists users in processing warrants according to the customer’s process flow ensuring that you are compliant, anytime! A central place is created where related documents are kept together, timelines are monitored and actions are audited. Seamless integration with an electronic warrant handover can be achieved, and SLA timelines can be monitored.

Marcel Hylkema
Solution Architect