SIGA
The Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority (SIGA) operates Saskatchewan’s five First Nations casinos. Under the First Nations Gaming Act in 1995, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Inc. created the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority. SIGA has been incorporated under The Non-Profit Corporation Act of Saskatchewan, since 1996. The Province of Saskatchewan, through the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA), regulates SIGA. SLGA is responsible for the approval of budgets, operating policies and procedures, expansion of services, etc. SIGA operates five properties: Bear Claw Casino (White Bear), Dakota Dunes Casino (Whitecap Dakota First Nation/Saskatoon), Gold Eagle Casino (North Battleford), Northern Lights Casino (Prince Albert) & Painted Hand Casino (Yorkton).
SIGA is responsible for the daily management and operation of accounting and auditing systems, the conduct of casino activities, the procurement and maintenance of gaming equipment and the casino's game delivery, in addition to security and surveillance. Managing all of these tasks throughout one property let alone five is a large undertaking. Time management is essential, to effectively operate and track all aspects. The iTrak Incident Reporting and Risk Management system was a welcomed tool to SIGA for effectively managing all staff, and incident records, as well as saving time when it came to report generation. SIGA has three lines of business including: slot machines, live games, ancillary services and entertainment. Their surveillance team and other personnel are tasked with entering, reviewing and analyzing gaming floor activities, and needed a tool that provided easy and efficient entry, reporting, statistics and results.
The iTrak incident platform offered them the solution to their problem, along with the integrated Gaming Module. The gaming module has given SIGA a complete standardized system for performing game audits, mini audits and player analyses. With approximately 1,600 employees, and over two million guests annually, SIGA has a lot of personnel tracking that needed to be kept up-to-date, by recording all employee and participant incidents. The personnel module included in the iTrak Incident Reporting and Risk Management System, enabled them to record all incidents that occurred in all properties.
It also enabled them to keep track of their employee behaviour, such as: days off, who came in late and when, etc. The days off tab located in the personnel module, gave SIGA a year calendar view, colour coded by “reason” so they are now able to easily view a developing pattern throughout their employee database. Ultimately this fully integrated system provided the SIGA properties with a more efficient and effective Incident Reporting and Risk Management tool.
The technology has enabled them to refine their policies, procedures and staff deployment to efficiently address risk issues, which the casino faces on a daily basis. SIGA will also expand into the Swift Current market (Living Sky Casino) in 2008. They plan to extend their iView Systems software for a complete security and surveillance system crossover solution.
Products Installed in all SIGA Properties:
Obstacle:
With mutliple properties to manage and 1,600 employees to track along with two million guests annually, SIGA needed to install a multi-property system, that would enable them to track and share all incidents at the multi-property level. With the need to keep up-to-date information on everyone that enters and exits their doors.
Solution:
To install a state of the art Incident Reporting and Risk Management System, that incorporated a personnel tracking element, as well as enabling gaming audits, mini audits and player analysis, to be run and reported on within the same platform.
SIGA Comments:
"iTrak has greatly enhanced SIGA’s security and surveillance ability to identify and track persons of interest within our casinos. The ability to call up images rapidly and attach media combined with direct access to associated incident files has been invaluable in ensuring SIGA properties are safe and secure. The ability to instantaneously share incident and exclusion information within the network of properties is an essential tool for enforcement,"
"In addition, the statistics generated by iTrak are utilized in the development of budgets and the targeting of resources for SIGA properties, which depend upon them the most. Having hard metrics to justify expenditures is essential for any business experiencing growth and more importantly in the field of security where it’s a challenge to measure a return on investment. iTrak assists in measuring the direct impact on the organization’s bottom line. By ensuring SIGA is well informed and organized, iTrak has been a wise investment having had a very positive impact for the organization. "
Director of Surveillance and Security
