Hi Lee,
You are absolutely right- we didn't get much into assessment in the webinar, but the ArcGIS platform can absolutely be configured to support assessment. The question is what kind of assessment are you seeking to do? Methodologically rigorous evaluation will always be done by an analyst or researcher with the more sophisticated tools of Desktop. What is great about the ArcGIS Platform, however, is that evaluation can now be easily presented as a dynamic map information product to a decision maker, whether in the form of a web app, or through operations dashboard.
Another aspect of assessment with the ArcGIS Platform that I think is exciting, is the ability for a knowledge worker (As you say- a Captain or other non-technical GIS user) to conduct some evaluation on their own. For example, they could use a web map and the online density analysis service to create hotspots for a pretest and posttest period to see if the hotspot areas they were targeting declined as a result of their efforts.
I think the key takeaways regarding the ArcGIS Platform and assessment is that for rigorous evaluations done by researchers and analysts, the platform now gives you better ways to visually communicate those results to decision-makers, while also providing easy-to-use tools to allow non-technical users to conduct simple assessements and share those results with the rest of their agency.
