i2 Advances Technology to Tackle Information Sharing Challenges
Sharing information across jurisdictions is essential for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to keep pace with criminals and terrorists who are not limited by geographic boundaries. During a panel discussion held at the annual gathering of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, several chiefs highlighted not only the technology challenges, but the policy, legal and cultural obstacles.
Responding to this critical need, i2 has broadened its product portfolio with a patented technology to help agencies overcome the lengthy process and legal hurdles to form information sharing agreements between jurisdictions.
"i2 has listened carefully to our customers and the pain points they face in implementing information sharing, and this step builds on our long heritage in facilitating secure collaboration within agencies, across agencies and across borders," said i2 CEO Bob Griffin. "Part of this is a technology challenge, but as we break down the technology barrier, we're exposing cultural, political, protocol and process issues. We've spent the last 10 years helping our clients with those challenges too."
Relevant to the IACP attendees – i2 solutions are helping US Law Enforcement customers share more than 2.5 billion records. One in three cops nationwide has access to i2 solutions across 4,000 jurisdictions. One in five cops nationwide are actively contributing, sharing and collaborating with i2 solutions.
i2 solutions now deliver three kinds of scalable and secure information sharing:
National Identity Index – This patented technology enhances COPLINK with a highly secure, encrypted and hashed cloud-based search of criminal data from all COPLINK nodes. If an information sharing agreement is not in place between jurisdictions, search results are not viewable; however, contact details to request information is presented. If an information sharing Memorandum of Understanding is in place between the two agencies, the search results include a link to the record.
By using i2's National Identity Index service, a detective in Boston, for example, could enter "John Doe" into their COPLINK database and automatically search the data from all COPLINK nodes. In addition to seeing records of John Doe in Boston, the detective might also learn that there are records of that same person in Tampa, even though they aren't able to see any of the information — speeding up the pace of the investigation because the Boston detective now knows to contact his peers in Tampa. Since only encrypted pointers are shared when no information sharing agreement is in place, privacy or legal concerns are alleviated. The National Identity Index is available to all existing COPLINK customers free of charge.
Concurrent Database Access – Law enforcement agencies rely on COPLINK, the most widely deployed lead generation system in the U.S., to organize and rapidly analyze vast quantities of seemingly unrelated criminal data currently housed in incompatible databases and record management systems. Many customers share data stores across multiple agencies and across borders.
For concurrent and collaborative intelligence analysis, law enforcement, national security and defense customers rely on i2's iBase and iBase IntelliShare, both highly secure and extremely flexible intelligence solutions.
With iBase, multiple agencies and organizations can contribute intelligence data to a single repository where multiple analysts can work together — in unison — to create, share and disseminate intelligence.
Node-to-Node – While COPLINK can be used as a single node for sharing within one geography, many customers employ node-to-node connections across multiple jurisdictions via formal MoUs. With these MoUs in place, users can access information with full rights management, while respecting all security levels of access. So, for example, if a police officer in Phoenix is seeking information on John Doe, they could obtain criminal records from Austin. The MoU process is possible for all COPLINK customers and the connectivity can happen in as little as an hour once the information sharing agreement is in place.
"With i2's multiple information sharing and collaboration capabilities, matched with our industry leading predictive and investigative analysis capabilities in use today, we're a bright spot in the global information sharing landscape," Griffin said. "There are many reasons that can prevent information sharing from happening. At i2, we have a proven track record of helping our customers knock down the barriers to making information sharing and collaboration a reality."