California Data Sharing: What’ s Next?
California is trailing behind other states with advancement into a more efficient and cost- effective method of data sharing. It is time to take a step back and regroup with our collective goal to reduce the dependency on private vendors with their associated high costs and annual fees.
The California Statewide Data Sharing Task Force, led by co-chairs Chief John Carli of the Vacaville Police Department and Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson, has formed a subcommittee to create recommendations to assist all California agencies with an effective statewide plan to share our records, incidents, jail and other law enforcement data, with the goal of reducing the high cost of relying solely on the private industry. The Department of Justice( DOJ) is participating on the subcommittee and has shared that they maintain 16 disparate databases. In the past five or so years, many regions in California have implemented Coplink as part of the original Cal OES Coplink user license purchase, to assist with extracting and interfacing data to their data sharing solution. At inception and with the help of funding from the State, this solution worked well. However, we now find a number of early adopting agencies dropping off of their regional Coplink systems due to the change or updates to computerized databases, and the associated“ reconnection” fees that have been quoted by the private vendors.
The Data Sharing Task Force subcommittee believes the most cost effective model to transition toward is for each data sharing region to implement processes and a system that allows participating agencies to become vendor agnostic and own their data. The data warehouse sharing model amongst cities, counties or regions can combine data into one centralized server location and significantly reduce the need for multiple data interfaces into a vendor’ s solution. As well, the DOJ is reviewing what opportunities they have to combine their 16 databases into a data warehouse solution to share with us.
Upcoming Data Sharing Requirements
In the next three years, California law enforcement agencies will be required to meet new reporting requirements to include the recent Use of Force Reporting( UR- SUS), RIPA AB953, and the move from California Uniform Crime Reporting( UCR) to NIBRS( National Incident- Based Reporting System) reporting. Manual data entry and tracking, or computer interfaces become cost prohibitive if each of us are required to extract data and submit individually to the Department of Justice( DOJ) via separate interfaces. The move to a regional data warehouse solution can provide economies of scale and data standardization that will reduce the costs of sharing data to DOJ and other systems.
Data Warehouse Model
Currently in California, the following regions are utilizing the data warehouse model, allowing them to interface with companies like Coplink using one interfaced data point:
ÎÎ ARJIS( San Diego with 10 contributing data sources)
ÎÎ
ARIES( Contra Costa County with 93 data sources combined)
ÎÎ Sonoma County( joint powers contract solution)
ÎÎ Los Angeles(?? NCRIC is Bay Area
ÎÎ Orange County( ILJAOC)
ÎÎ San Bernardino County
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