WARNING: Successful Law Enforcement Information Sharing Can be Hazardous to Your Career
LInX is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s Law Enforcement Information Sharing Project. Those of you that know me know that I was an architect of the LInX approach and a project manager for many of the LInX locations over a five year period. What many don’t realize is that LInX was started by the Navy with a mere $50,000 purchase order. Through what was a largely grass-roots efforts by state and local law enforcement executives, fueled by the leadership of John McKay (one of the fired U.S.Attorneys) and Dave Brant (former NCIS Director), LInX has grown to a nearly $100 million dollar project in nine major regions around the U.S.
What’s particularly interesting about this whole saga is that when John took this information sharing success story to his leadership and offered it up as a “proven approach to nationwide information sharing,” they put the politics of internal DOJ projects ahead of the needs of state and local law enforcement and in the process took a good man down.
Unfortunately, they saw LInX as a competing “IT system” and not as what I and others believed–that LInX really was “a proven and standardized process for organizing, implementing, and evaluating regional law enforcement information sharing.” I and others believed the LInX approach could have been implemented with many of the other IT systems currently in use around the country at that time (or being developed) for information sharing. We also recognized that LInX was not a threat to any of the national-level systems being developed by DOJ (or DHS) and, in-fact, (as DOJ would attest to today) are now convinced that those national efforts CANNOT succeed unless LInX-like information sharing projects are quickly replicated in other parts of the country.
While I am sure the final chapter in the U.S. Attorney firings has yet to be written, my hope is that the recently released report will help us to move past federal politics and realize that the true victims here are the state and local law enforcement agencies who were cheated out of a proven approach to enabling the electronic sharing of each other’s law enforcement records–let’s give the LInX approach (and what John and Dave started) its due and develop a formal project to make the process available to other’s who are still struggling with getting it done. I’ve summarized the LInX approach below.
STEPS IN THE LINX APPROACH—It is NOT about the technology.
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Strategy – Develop a regional law enforcement plan detailing areas of concern and how to leverage information sharing for the desired impact.
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Governance – Establish an information sharing governance infrastructure that gives each participating Chief Executive Officer an equal vote on all matters pertaining to the regional LInX system.
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Data – Identify and agree to integrate ALL relevant data. The key to success is sharing more not less information.
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Capabilities – Provide easy to use query and analysis tools, with multi-levels of security. LInX is a system developed by law enforcement personnel for law enforcement personnel. Feedback from user groups and the flexibility to make enhancements to the system keeps the LInX system robust and valuable to the community.
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Technology – The LInX system is built with open standards and leverages existing technology to integrate diverse systems. An open standards architecture that is flexible, scalable, sharable, and possess the ability to enhance current systems interfaced with.
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Full Support – There are some requirements for the participating agencies. The goal is to have minimal impact on a participating agency’s resources, however, there is a need to support user training, system administration, and maintenance.
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Evaluation – Conduct formal evaluations to assess achievement of desired impact. The LInX system is being developed to enhance law enforcement utilizing technology to assist the investigator and patrol officer.