The defensible scoring record for police promotional oral boards —your first process is free

When the Civil Service Appeal Comes, What Can You Hand Them?

OralBoardScore is the digital scoring platform for police promotional oral boards — every panelist's score, written rationale, and submission timestamp, in one defensible record.

What is OralBoardScore?

The document your paper process never produced

OralBoardScore gives every panelist a simple scoring interface on any device — no login required, just a link. Each panelist independently scores each candidate on your chosen dimensions, records a written rationale for each score, and submits. You get a live dashboard as scores come in.

When the board is done, you have a complete, timestamped, attorney-ready record of how every panelist scored every candidate — and a ranked eligible list that reflects the official civil service weights you set.

The problem

Nobody designed your process to survive an appeal

Every police department runs oral boards. Most run them on paper scoring sheets collected by hand and averaged in a spreadsheet. Nobody designed that process to survive a civil service appeal. They designed it to run the promotion.

When a passed-over candidate's attorney demands the scoring record — every panelist's score for every candidate, every criterion, every written rationale, with timestamps — you need a document, not a folder of handwritten sheets.

Most departments never have to produce that document. Some do. The ones that do know exactly what we're talking about.

“A candidate's attorney called the day after we posted the list. She wanted the scoring record. We had paper sheets and a spreadsheet.”

Two panelists give the same candidate completely different scores on the same criterion, and nobody wrote down why. Twenty years of running it this way also means twenty years of hoping the question never comes.

What OralBoardScore does

A list and a record, from the same board

Your oral board already works. OralBoardScore changes what it leaves behind — from a folder of handwritten sheets into a document that answers the question an attorney is going to ask.

A link, not a login.
Every panelist gets a simple scoring interface on any device — no account, no app, nothing for IT to provision. Outside raters and command staff from other agencies are scoring within a minute of opening the email.
Rationale required on every score.
A panelist cannot submit a criterion score without a written rationale. That is what turns two different scores on the same criterion from an unanswerable question into a documented difference of professional judgment.
Independent scoring, enforced.
No panelist sees another panelist's scores until they submit their own. The senior officer on the board no longer sets the anchor everyone else adjusts toward — and you can show that they didn't.
Your dimensions, your civil service weights.
Communication skills, problem-solving ability, ethical judgment, leadership potential, community relations — or whatever your jurisdiction's rule specifies. Set the written and oral weights your civil service commission requires.
A live dashboard as scores come in.
See which panelists have submitted and which candidates are complete, in real time. No calling around the day before the list is due to find out who still has sheets in their car.
A ranked eligible list, with preference applied.
Veteran's preference applied automatically from each candidate's record, ties broken by rule, and the whole scoring record exported as one document — ready to hand to a civil service attorney if you ever need to.

How it works

Ten minutes to set up. One document at the end.

1
Set up your promotion board
Enter your candidates, your competency dimensions, and your civil service scoring weights. Add your panelists by email. Your board is ready in under ten minutes.
2
Panelists score independently
Each panelist opens their link — no login, no app — and scores each candidate, criterion by criterion, with a written rationale. They cannot see other panelists' scores until they submit their own.
3
You get the record
A complete, timestamped scoring record: every panelist, every candidate, every criterion, every rationale. Plus a ranked eligible list with veteran's preference applied. Ready to hand to a civil service attorney if you ever need to.

Pricing

First promotional process free — no payment until your second

Run a real board end to end — real candidates, real panelists, real eligible list — before you pay anything. No card, no procurement cycle, no pilot agreement.

Per process

$399per promotional process

For departments that promote once or twice a year. Pay for the board you're running, nothing in between.

  • One complete promotional process
  • Unlimited candidates and panelists
  • Required written rationale on every score
  • Your competency dimensions and civil service weights
  • Full timestamped scoring record export
Start Your Free Process →

Annual

$999per year, unlimited processes

For departments running boards for multiple ranks across the year — sergeant, lieutenant, and detective processes on one plan.

  • Unlimited promotional processes
  • Unlimited candidates and panelists
  • Everything in the per-process plan
  • Dimensions reusable across ranks
  • Priority support
Start Your Free Process →

Who this is for

Built for departments that run their own boards

If you are the person who would have to produce the scoring record — and today that means a folder of handwritten sheets and a spreadsheet — OralBoardScore was built for you.

Police department HR directors
Responsible for producing the eligible list and defending the process if it's challenged — usually while running the promotion alongside everything else on the desk.
Civil service commissions
Certifying eligible lists and hearing candidate appeals, where the commission needs the underlying criterion scores and rationale rather than a final average.
Chiefs of departments with 25–500 officers
Too large to promote informally, too small to carry a testing budget — self-administering sergeant, lieutenant, and detective boards in-house.
Departments seating outside raters
Boards that bring in command staff from neighboring agencies, where scoring sheets currently have to physically travel to be compiled.

Why departments choose OralBoardScore

Not an HR system. Not a testing vendor.

It produces the document.
Every panelist, every candidate, every criterion, every rationale, timestamped and attributed — the thing an attorney asks for and a folder of paper sheets cannot become.
It keeps your board yours.
You are not outsourcing the promotion to a testing firm for five figures and losing control of your own process. Your panel, your dimensions, your weights.
It costs nothing to try.
Your first promotional process is free, with unlimited candidates and panelists. Run your next board on it before you decide.
It takes no rollout.
Panelists get a link and score from any device. No accounts, no app, no training, and nothing for IT to approve before your next board.
It removes the arithmetic.
Civil service weights, veteran's preference, and tiebreaks applied by rule instead of by hand — so the eligible list isn't one transcription error away from a problem.
It documents independence.
No panelist sees another's scores before submitting. If anyone asks whether the senior officer's view shaped the board, you have an answer.

A department that has survived one civil service appeal on paper scores already knows what this costs — in legal fees, in delayed promotions, and in the months a senior administrator spends explaining a process that was never designed to be explained.

A department that hasn't yet is one promotion board away from finding out.

Get in touch

Questions about OralBoardScore, your promotional process, or how the platform fits your jurisdiction's civil service rules? Email us directly — tell us the rank you're testing for and how your board is seated, and we'll get back to you.

First promotional process free — no payment until your second. There is nothing to sign up for before you write to us.