How North Carolina Streamlined Law Enforcement Training and Certification

Managing officer training and certification across multiple agencies is never simple, especially when it spans thousands of personnel, dozens of delivery sites, and a high-stakes public safety mission. For North Carolina’s Department of Justice, fragmented systems, manual processes, and compliance risk were daily realities.

North Carolina has two law enforcement “standards” divisions, the Criminal Justice and the Sheriffs’ Standards Division. These organizations regulate the training and certification of officers, who are trained by the North Carolina Justice Academy (NCJA). Before 2014, these entities utilized various software tools and paper-based processes to manage their operations.

But today, by adopting the Acadis Readiness Suite, these agencies enjoy unified operations under one secure, cloud-based platform purpose-built for the complexities of federal and state law enforcement. The NCJA started with the Acadis modules needed to manage its two academy campuses and launch a new Virtual Campus.

“Each time one staff member is freed up from a manual process,” one administrator noted, “they can work on other priorities that continue to advance the law enforcement profession in North Carolina.”

The Challenge: Disconnected Systems, High Administrative Burden

Before Acadis, each agency operated independently with a mix of paper files and disparate tools. Officers had to juggle multiple systems for certification, registration, and in-service training. Administrators lacked real-time insight into training completions and compliance. There were no audit trails. There was no centralized data, and no way to scale or modernize with confidence.

For an agency responsible for training over 10,000 officers annually, that fragmentation was both costly and cumbersome.

The Solution: One Platform. Multiple Agencies. Complete Oversight.

With Acadis, North Carolina launched a statewide Virtual Campus, centralized all training and certification records, standardized testing across 68 delivery sites, and introduced online compliance auditing. All this was done while maintaining the secure partitioning of each agency’s data and clearly defined roles.

Key outcomes include:

 

• 240,000+ online course completions in 2024 alone (up from 1,883 in 2015)

 

• $500,000+ in online payments processed for licenses and services, which resulted in $54,000/year saved in printing and mailing certification tests

 

• Real-time, defensible compliance tracking across four separate agencies

 

“It has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said an NCJA Instructor Developer. “Officers are also not away from their agency and families, and their agencies don’t have to pay overtime and backfill their shifts. There are no adjunct instructor costs. Courses are available 24/7, allowing officers to work at their own pace. Officers sign in, they take the training, including a pretest and post-test, and at the end, they can print their certificate. It’s just so easy for them to do that.”

What This Means for Your Agency

Whether you’re managing an academy, enforcing standards, or overseeing compliance, North Carolina’s success with Acadis offers a roadmap:

• Unify siloed systems without compromising security or autonomy
• Deliver scalable, blended training programs with 24/7 online access
• Strengthen compliance with built-in audit trails, automated reminders, and configurable workflows
• Reduce costs and workload by eliminating paperwork and duplicative processes

The result? More readiness. Better real-time data. And a future-proof system that grows with your mission.

Download the full case study here to see how North Carolina modernized law enforcement operations statewide. And see how your agency can do the same.