C

At all times, the head of an investigation agency needs to know the progress of every matter under investigation and does so in numerous ways:

• Staff meetings in which each investigator discusses cases in progress

• One-on-one meetings between the agency head and investigators

• Informal discussions that occur casually, such as by “walking around”

• Daily activity reports • Reports of investigation

The daily activity report, like the name implies, is particularly important. It is filled out each day by each investigator and submitted to the agency head the following morning in a word-processed configuration. The daily activity report can be a template on the investigator’s hard drive. After information is entered in the template, it is sent to the agency head as an attachment to an e-mail or simply printed out and given to the agency head. The report works best for the agency head when the content of the report is cumulative, that is to say, it states the previous day’s activity as an extension of activities that started when the case was first opened. This method is labor intensive for the investigator because it means that every case worked the previous day requires a separate report. For the agency head, however,

it means he or she is relieved of the need to retrieve earlier reports in order to better understand the current report.