02.03.2013
Budget, congress, criminal justice, Data, data sharing, Information sharing, justice, law enforcement, Law enforcement information sharing, leadership, LEIS, N-DEx, NIEM
If you want law enforcement agencies to share information, go to the source and help the Chiefs and Sheriffs to push their data in the FBI’s National Data Exchange N-DEx. Trying to impose information sharing with unfunded standards mandates will not work.
As someone who has been in the standards business since 1995, history has proven to me that:
- The business need must drive standards, standards can NEVER drive the business; and
- Trying to SELL the business on standards is a losing strategy.
Hi Congressman Reichert,
You won’t remember me, but a long time ago we were in meetings together in Seattle with the likes of John McKay, Dave Brandt, Scott Jacobs, Dale Watson, and others working on building the Law Enforcement Information Exchange (LInX); I was the technical guy on the project, working with Chief Pat Lee and our very dear lost friend Julie Fisher (may she rest-in-peace, I sure miss her).
A hell of a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then–it’s been nearly TWELVE YEARS. If we look back over this time, we have had so many bills, laws, strategies, policies, papers, speeches, conferences, proclamations, and other assorted attempts to prod law enforcement data loose from the nearly 18,000 agencies across our country. While we are far better off than we were back then, I think we can agree that we still have a long way to go.
Where we differ, I’m afraid, is in the approach to get there – a few days ago, you proposed legislation, the Department of Justice Global Advisory Committee Authorization Act of 2013, as a means to improve information sharing among law enforcement agencies – do we really believe another “stick” will work to get agencies to share information? Do we really believe it’s a technology or data standards problem that’s preventing law enforcement data from being shared? As a technologist for 34 years, and someone who has been involved in law enforcement information sharing since the Gateway Project in St. Louis, MO in 1999, I can tell you it is neither.
While I applaud the work of the GAC, and I have many colleagues who participate in its work, I’m afraid having more meetings about information sharing, developing more standards, approving more legislation, and printing more paper will NOT help to reach the level of information sharing we all want.
Instead, I want to propose to you a solution aimed at capturing the commitment of the men and women who can actually make law enforcement information sharing happen, and virtually overnight (metaphorically speaking) – namely, the great men and women who lead our police and sheriffs departments across America.
Now to be fair, many of these agencies are already contributing their records to a system I am sure you are familiar with called the National Data Exchange (N-DEx). Built by the FBI CJIS Division, this system has matured into a pretty respectable platform for not only sharing law enforcement information, but also for helping cops and analysts to do their respective investigative and analytic work.
Now, in case you are wondering, I do not own stock in any of the companies that built N-DEx, nor has the FBI signed me up as a paid informant to market N-DEx. I write to you on my own volition as a result of my nearly six years of volunteer work as a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) Committee.
About two years ago I volunteered to lead a small sub-group of the committee who have either built, led, or managed municipal, state, federal, or regional information sharing systems. Our charge was (and still is) to help CJIS take a look under the hood of N-DEx to see what’s in there (data wise) and to help figure out what needs to be done to make it a more effective tool to help cops across America catch more criminals, and maybe, just maybe, even prevent criminals from acting in the first place.
While our work is far from done, I can tell you that one thing we need is more data – as you well know, be it N-DEx, LInX, RAIN, or any other information sharing system, it is only as good as the data that’s put into it.
Believe it or not we already have the data standards in-place to get the data into N-DEx. CJIS has developed two Information Exchange Packet Descriptions (IEPDs) that tells agencies exactly what to do and how to format and package up their data so it can get to N-DEx. Additionally, CJIS has an extensive team ready to assist and my colleagues over at the IJIS Institute hold training sessions sponsored by BJA, to help agencies along the process (NIEM training).
These two IEPDs can help law enforcement agencies today to share the following law enforcement records:
- Service Call
- Incident
- Arrest
- Missing Person
- Warrant Investigation
- Booking
- Holding
- Incarceration
- Pre-Trial Investigation
- Pre-Sent Investigation
- Supervised Release
So what’s the hold up? Speaking only for myself, and I will be very straight with you, I believe the root cause for not getting more law enforcement data into N-DEx is the current piecemeal, politically charged, hit and miss grant funding process that the Act you propose, if passed, will burden even further – see page 3, lines 17-25 and page 4, lines 1-6.
Instead, I ask that you please answer the following question…
If law enforcement information sharing is important enough to push though a Public Act, where is the nationwide project, with funding, to get all shareable law enforcement data loaded into the one system that would give ALL law enforcement officers and analysts access to collective knowledge of the nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies?
The immediate answer might be “we already have one; N-DEx;” however, N-DEx is only a piece of the answer…it’s as they say, “one hand clapping.” And in all fairness to my friends and colleagues at the FBI CJIS Division, that program was only charged and funded to build the N-DEx bucket, they were never funded to actually go get the data to fill the bucket.
The strategy, for whatever reason back then, was relegated to a “build it and they will come” approach, that IMHO has not worked very well so far and may take another 5-10 years to work. I should also note that the bucket isn’t totally empty…there are quite a number of agencies and regional projects, like LInX, that have stepped up and are helping to fill the bucket – however, if we want to expedite filling up the bucket, focusing on mandating more standards is not the answer
What I submit is the “other hand clapping” is the need for a shift focus, away from policy, standards, and technology, and establish a funded nationwide project that will offer a menu of choices and support packages to the Chiefs and Sheriffs that will enable them to start sending as many of their shareable records as possible to N-DEx.
Some of the options/support packages could include:
- Provide direct funding to agencies and regional information sharing systems to develop N-DEx conformant data feeds to N-DEx;
- Grant direct funding to RMS and CAD system providers to develop N-DEx conformant data feeds from their software, with the stipulation they must offer the capability at no additional cost to agencies that use their products;
- Establish a law enforcement data mapping assistance center, either bolted on to IJIS NIEM Help Desk, as an extension of NLETS menu of services, or through funding support at an existing information sharing project like the Law Enforcement Technology, Training, & Research Center who works in partnership with the University of Central Florida.
At the end of the day, we all know that the safety and effectiveness of law enforcement is greatly affected by the information he or she has at their fingertips when responding to that call.
Do you really want to leave it to chance that that officer’s life is taken, or a criminal or terrorist is let go because his or her agency wasn’t “lucky enough” to win the grant lottery that year?
So, let’s empower the single most powerful force that can make sure the information is available – the Sheriff or Chief leading that agency. Let’s stop with the unfunded mandates, laws, standards, studies, point papers, etc., and let’s finally put a project in-place with the funding necessary to make it happen.
v/r
Chuck Georgo,
Executive Director
NOWHERETOHIDE.ORG
chuck@nowheretohide.org
05.04.2012
Data, data sharing, JIEM, Law enforcement information sharing, LEIS, NIEM
I posted this response to a question on the LinkedIn NIEM group where someone asked about the slow rate of NIEM adoption; i thought i would cros post my response here.
What’s standing in the way of NIEM adoption?It’s about leadership.
- It’s about reducing complexity.
- It’s about getting the word out.
- It’s about opening up proprietary protocols.
- It’s about conformance.
- It’s even about standards.
What’s really standing in the way? Two things…a) utility and b) a market for it.
I think it would also be wise for us to take a few pages out of the eCommerce, EDI, EBXML world (and honestly, the internet as a whole). EDI became a standard because large companies said “if you want to do business with me, then you will stop faxing me POs and start sending them to me in this new thing called EDI. When XML appeared on the scene the same companies converted their information exchanges to EBXML and vendors and service providers folllowed suit – one might say if it weren’t for the EDI-to-EBXML movement, we might not even be talking about GJXDM or NIEM today; EBXML was groundbreaking in ts day.
So what’s in the way? I’ll look at this in terms of two things I mentioned above:
- Utility of NIEM– The “technology Acceptance Model” tells us that for increased adoption of a technology, it must be “useful and easy to use.” Today, however, we are having difficulty getting people to see the utility of NIEM, and it certainly has not proven itself to be easy to use either. Now, to be fair, NIEM started off life as dictionary of common data elements (words if you will) with working views of syntax and semantics. Then we have IEPDs. These are like sentences strung together, and by different authors, and the difficulty is that we don’t have a good way to know how well those sentences are strung together, whether or not we can assemble those sentences into comprehensible paragraphs, or even what “stories”(and where in those stories) those sentences might belong. In other words, I don’t think NIEM is coupled tightly enough to the business processes of Justice and Public Safety agencies. To become more useful, we must dust off JIEM, revalidate the inventory of Justice exchanges, and specifically tie them to NIEM IEPDs. And while we do this, we must clean up the inventory of IEPDs, remove ones that are toublesome, and reference those IEPDs back to the Justice business process and exchanges in JIEM.
- A Market for NIEM– Unfortunately, reuse has NOT always result in cost savings. There are a number of examples where agencies have had bad experiences with implementing NIEM, whether it was because of lack of skill of the integrator, poor IEPD design, poor project planning, immature integration tools, or good old politics, saying an agency will save money by using NIEM is not a strong position right now. To resolve issue (after we join NIEM and JIEM) I think we must attack the problem at the root–in the technology acquisition process. Stop with the buttons and bumper stickers and neat shirts (I have one too). What we need to do is drive NIEM use through RFPs and contracting processes. Of course, we have to first clean up the clearinghoue, but then we must help agencies to craft RFP language that they can use to call for use of NIEM and “NIEM-enabled” web services to effect the information exchanges called out in the business processes to be suported by the new technoogy acquisition. While some vendors have demonstrated leadership in this area, the real driver (in a free market economy) is the contracting process–vendors will invest in their ability to adopt and integrate NIEM if it’s in their financial interest to do so–they do have payrolls to meet and investors to keep happy. Some shining light in this quest is also the effort by IJIS and others who are working hard to establish a “standards-like” effort to clean up IEPDs and to help vendors demonstrate conformance (or compliance) to those standards for their products.
Your comments/thoughts are welcomed….r/Chuck
29.05.2010
Award, fusion center, Information sharing, ISE-SAR, NIEM
On May 4, 2010, e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government and Emergency Management honored first responders demonstrating measurable improvements in the lives of the people and businesses they serve. Among the recipients of the inaugural Emergency Management Digital Distinction Awards was the Utah Statewide Terrorism and Information Analysis Center (SIAC). Core to SIAC’s capapbilities is the Microsoft Fusion Core Solution technology platform. Here’s a snippet from the Center’s website:
Best Collaboration and Information Sharing
Fusion Center Empowers Utah’s Crime Stoppers, Utah Department of Public Safety, Statewide Information & Analysis Center
The Utah Statewide Information & Analysis Center (SIAC), managed by the Utah Department of Public Safety, is a public safety partnership collaboration with all of the state’s law enforcement and public safety agencies to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence appropriately for enhanced protection of Utah’s citizens, communities and critical infrastructure. As the state’s intelligence fusion (terrorism and response) center, SIAC replaced a legacy system that lacked effective data management practices and included manual, duplicative efforts. SIAC implemented a new set of technologies which utilized existing assets, integrated domain-specific applications, and improved business processes for information collection and management, and analysis and information sharing with Utah’s 29 county Sheriff’s Offices, 180 law enforcement agencies, and more than 26 specialized task forces.
Fusion Core Solution is an open and extensible information sharing and analysis product, based on the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and Information Sharing Environment-Suspicious Activity Reporting (ISE-SAR) Functional Standard, developed to help municipal, county, regional, state, and federal intelligence and fusion centers improve operations through workflow management, information sharing, and geospatial intelligence technologies. For more information about Fusion Core Solution see http://www.microsoft.com/fusion
03.08.2009
data sharing, Evaluation, Information sharing, LEIS, NIEM, Performance Measures
I just finished reading of your appointment on the FederalNews Radio website. As you begin your review of the state of information sharing and the ISE, I would like to offer up some thoughts as someone who has been an information sharing evangelist for nearly a decade. here are seven points to consider:
- Resist the urge to see information sharing as an outcome. Information sharing is a means to an end, not the end itself. Each federal agency, every state and regional fusion center, and all law enforcement intelligence units should have a clear set of information requirements, questions if you will, that information sharing and the intelligence process should work to answer–hold agencies accountable for having clear and valid requirements. This has been a common practice in the intelligence community for decades and should be a practice for all information sharing elements.
- Build clear accountability into the information sharing process. Every federal agency, fusion center and law enforcement agency should have one person, preferably an impassioned, well-respected leader, that can ensure that their agencies requirements are well documented and communicated horizontally across federal boundaries and vertically to local, state, and municipal agencies, and (where applicable) private sector organizations.
- Establish clear linkage of information sharing to agency operational performance measures. Just as staffing, information technology, facilities, and utilities are seen as strategic resources in a performance-based budget, information sharing must be seen as a resource to be strategically used to help an agency achieve its mission. When measuring the success of information sharing, focus on the extent to which it helped achieve agency goals–just as counting cases in law enforcement is a misleading way to judge public safety success, counting RFIs, records shared, SARs submitted is not a good way to gauge information sharing success–successful information sharing can only be measured through the extent to which it helps agencies (at all levels) achieve their operational goals.
- Discourage agencies from using stovepiped portals for information sharing. All shareable data should be available as a “service” for consumer agencies to ingest into their systems and not through a dedicated portal that users will need a discrete login to access. You can read my previous “Portal-mania” blog post for more detail here, but all federal agencies should be required to make their data accessible through National information Exchange Model (NIEM) based web services. This will enable consumer agencies to integrate multiple data streams into their workflow and will reduce the number of websites and portals analysts are required to access to perform their work.
- Give the same amount of attention to what is shared and how it is shared. Over the last few years, a significant amount of effort has gone into how information is shared at the expense of understanding the depth and breadth of information actually being shared. Many regional and national information sharing efforts still only contain basic levels of information, or worse are just pointer systems that require additional human effort to gain access to the actual record. Encourage agencies to communicate to each other what specific information is being shared, and what is not being shared, and help everyone understand the consequences of their decisions.
- Encourage maximum use of NIEM and the Information Exchange Package Descriptions (IEPD) contained it its clearinghouse. NIEM has emerged as the dictionary of shareable data elements. When you string together sets of these data elements to satisfy a specific business need, an IEPD is born. The NIEM IEPD clearinghouse contains more than 150 IEPDs, many of which apply to national security, law enforcement and public safety missions. While many federal agencies have pledged their support of NIEM, more effort is needed to ensure that they first seek to use IEPDs already contained in the clearinghouse and do not develop one-off IEPDs designed to meet very narrow applications.
- Finally, foster a culture of transparency to help communicate an appreciation of personal civil rights and civil liberties. All information sharing and intelligence operations should engage in proactive efforts to help alleviate any fears that individual privacy and liberties are violated by any of the actions taken by those agencies. In my September 3, 2009 blog posting I list ten questions a fusion center director should ask of their own intelligence operations. I’d like to offer up these questions as a beginning framework for any information sharing or intelligence operation. They also serve as a good framework for evaluating the extent to which information sharing and intelligence operations are in fact seriously working to do the right thing.
In closing, I hope you can see how these seven points help to frame how you might structure a results oriented evaluation of information sharing across our federal agencies and with our state and regional fusion center, and private sector partners. Taken together you will be able to report the extent to which agencies have:
- Documented their information sharing requirements – what needs to be shared;
- Someone who can be directly held accountable for effective and proper information sharing;
- Linked their need for information to specific operational goals and strategies;
- Implemented mechanisms that makes it easy for other agencies to access their information;
- Ensured that they are sharing the right information (most meaningful) information;
- Taken advantage of NIEM as a way to save money and expedite information sharing; and
- Taken measures to proactively diffuse public (and media) perceptions of information misuse.
I wish you well in your new role as Senior Director for Information Sharing Policy.
Regards,
Chuck Georgo
chuck@nowheretohide.org
28.06.2009
data sharing, Information sharing, JIEM, law enforcement, Law enforcement information sharing, LEIS, N-DEx, NIEM, Processes, Strategy
Remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial? “You got chocolate on my peanut butter “…”No, you got peanut butter on my chocolate “…? Well, this is one of these stories…
It’s no secret, the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is a huge success. Not only has it been embraced horizontally and vertically for law enforcement information sharing at all levels of government, but it is now spreading internationally. A check of the it.ojp.gov website lists more than 150 justice-related Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) based on NIEM–it’s been adopted by N-DEX, ISE-SAR, NCIC, IJIS PMIX, NCSC, OLLEISN, and many other CAD and RMS projects.
For at least the last four years, Search.org has been maintaining the Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM) developed by Search.org. JIEM documents more than 15,000 justice information exchanges across 9 justice processes, 75 justice events, that affect 27 different justice agencies.
So if JIEM establishes the required information exchanges required in the conduct of justice system business activities, and NIEM defines the syntactic and semantic model for the data elements within those justice information exchanges…then…
Wouldn’t it make sense for JIEM exchanges to call-out specific NIEM IEPDs?
And vice-versa, wouldn’t it make sense for NIEM IEPDs to identify the specific JIEM exchanges they correspond to?
Here’s a diagram that illustrates this…
Let me know what you think..
r/Chuck
chuck@nowheretohide.org – www.nowheretohide.org