KEEPING FOCUSED: Law Enforcement Information Sharing – Why it is necessary; What it should look like; Why we continue to struggle.

Thomas G. McWeeney

Executive Director

Center for Strategic Management

In St. Louis in 1998, a local prosecutor told his colleagues that the situation was not acceptable in his community where violent crime was rising dramatically.  He challenged them:  “if we could only bring what we collectively know to each investigation, we would dramatically reduce crime in every community in the region”.  The group agreed, doubting that such a high minded idea would ever come to pass, but two local United States Attorneys nonetheless commissioned a first-of-its-kind information sharing project that was intended to integrate the records of all law enforcement agencies within one data base for the St. Louis Metropolitan area.   And with this, the information sharing age was born.

The idea seemed simple, as most successful innovations are:  Provide the capability for law enforcement agencies to quickly and easily share information to develop leads to solve crimes, disrupt criminal activities, prevent terrorism, and protect America.  That idea is now technologically possible and financially feasible. 

However, most innovative strategies require a chief strategist – a visionary to lead the way, to insist on excellence, to motivate others, and to provide a sustained commitment to the effort.    Unfortunately, apart from heroic efforts by the Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) within their operating sphere, no such person has emerged to lead the effort, either on behalf of the nation’s 20,000 state and local law enforcement agencies or the federal government, leaving the effort not only without leadership, but also without a unifying concept, without a master plan, and without any organized capability to proceed.   

As we near the end of the 9-11 decade, this technologically possible, financially feasible concept remains an elusive ideal for most American communities, rendering them unnecessarily vulnerable.   This abdication of leadership on a national level- for something considered so vital and so feasible - is a vivid example of the need for a new “performance ethic” for public servants.   

It’s hard to explain for those not involved in the every day workings of government.  But I’ll try to explain.  And I’ll try to offer a differing perspective. 

Whether the criminal activity is embezzlement, robbery, fraud, or money laundering; whether it involves computers, mobsters, or violent gangs; or whether it involves the use of guns or other forms of coercion is of no concern to criminals pursuing their illegal enterprise.   Criminals are not bound by restrictive laws, they are not limited by jurisdiction, and they have rapidly learned to take advantage of modern technology to communicate with one another very effectively and securely.    It has become commonplace for criminals to live in County A, have associates in County B, plan their crimes in State C, communicate with associates in Region D, and commit the crime in City E. 

Most law enforcement organizations maintain separate record systems and differing ways of collecting and maintaining the data - which are generally incompatible with one another.   Our federal system, which allocates vastly different authority to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies complicates this further by creating “levels” of investigative activity in which information cannot be shared among law enforcement brethren (outside crises or exceptional circumstances) without risk of compromising the investigation or injuring innocent parties.  Moreover, sharing of data among jurisdictions is made even more daunting by the rather intense “resistance” to sharing each other’s information that has long been part of the law enforcement competitive culture.

In the post 9-11 world, overcoming these systemtic limitations has become a national mandate, and, in my view a moral and  ethical imperative.  The evidence left in each single jurisdiction is generally a small piece of a large, complex puzzle, in which no single piece appears to be significant on its face.  The traffic ticket in County A, the isolated robbery in County B,  the fraud investigation in State C, are often viewed as isolated pieces of data, unless they are combined into a single story.  Then it becomes clear that the traffic ticket, the robbery, and the fraud investigation are all clues to a wider crime scheme that cannot be seen in isolation.   As simple as this may seem to the average American, who assumes that government has the capacity to snoop, spy, and intrude at will, this capability remains outside the capabilities of most American communities today. 

From a moral or ethical perspective, questions beg to be answered:  “Who is responsible to address this vulnerability?  Who is accountable for this unnecessary vulnerability?   Is there not a performance ethic that can motivate contemporary leaders to move decisively to overcome the bureaucratic and cultural obstacles that continue to keep us unnecessarily vulnerable?

Leadership, Innovation, and Success

The new information sharing approach first developed in St. Louis was managed by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Program, under the leadership of Katherine Armentrout, in the Department of Justice (1998-2001).  In the aftermath of 9-11, Dale Watson, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Program (2001-2003), assumed leadership, refined the project and made plans to deploy to it to Joint Terrorism Task Forces throughout the country. 

As is so often the case with federal projects, Watson’s retirement from the FBI left a leadership void that was picked up by two of his colleagues on the project – Dave Brant, the Director of Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and John McKay, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington.   Brant believed information sharing and the partnerships it fostered to be a critical aspect of the NCIS mission.   McKay believed his community was vulnerable to potential terrorists and other serious crime elements, and led the development of a regional governance structure that brought federal, state, and local governments together in a way that overcame all traditional obstacles.   

These iterations of information sharing activity have now coalesced in the NCIS Law Enforcement Information Exchange (LInX) program. LInX is now fully developed, funded, and implemented in nine communities, and is funded and managed by the NCIS (2003- present).    Moreover, LInX is widely acclaimed for its technical and managerial achievements as well as for the impact it has provided to each LInX community.    

Since 2004, LInX has been instrumental in contributing to the resolution of crimes.  The system can be credited with solving many cold cases, some more than five years old.  It has also aided in quickly identifying suspects from incomplete information like aliases or partial street addresses, and information within the system has led to the discovery of other crimes.  For officers serving warrants, LInX has provided information on dangerous suspects that has allowed for their safe apprehension.  Without question, this information sharing capability has played a major role in the recent evolution of law enforcement in the United States.  The motivation for and the objectives of the LInX team was always to catch bad guys that wouldn’t otherwise be caught, to catch them faster than otherwise would have taken place, and to provide intelligence and other leads to federal law enforcement agencies where a seemingly innocuous piece of data may be the clue that prevents the next terrorist act or returns the kidnapped child home safely.   

The Challenge:  Half Full or Half Empty

As Executive Director of CSM, I am proud of our role in this historic effort.  I am both grateful for the opportunity that we have been given, awestruck by the commitment and dedication of senior leadership in these agencies, and extremely proud of what we collectively have accomplished.   Among the most significant of these accomplishments was working with NCIS, United States Attorneys, and local sheriffs and chiefs of police to overcome most of the traditional obstacles that have prevented information sharing from getting off the ground.

Yet, I continue to be disappointed in the lack of progress made across the country in information sharing.    Throughout the past decade, I had hoped that once it was operational, the clear and unmatched successes of the LInX program would be seen as a model for the larger law enforcement and intelligence communities – which are still struggling to find answers to their information sharing limitations.  While LInX now includes over 400 law enforcement agencies as participants, this remains only a fraction of the nation’s 20,000 sheriff and police departments, port authorities, and federal agencies.   While progress is certainly far greater than most would have imagined when we began our journey in 1998, law enforcement professionals continue to struggle, in my view, for two basic reasons:

1.  An excessive focus on technology and policy  has distorted the information sharing dialogue among federal law enforcement agencies, so that the success is widely viewed in terms of expansion of information sharing projects, rather than operational and investigative results – i.e., leads, intelligence, arrests.   

While there is growing demand throughout the country for information sharing systems such as LInX, and while the policy of almost every organization supports and encourages participation in these systems, there is still no ongoing effort to systematically provide information sharing to American communities, there are only limited efforts to integrate federal and state/local investigative data, no federal agency (with the exception of NCIS) has assumed leadership on this issue, and no agency is prepared to fund it.  

Moreover, within federal agencies (with the exception of NCIS), information sharing projects are managed by the agency’s technology component – not their operational components – and the resulting dialogue has predictably emphasized computers, software, interconnectivity, and technical standards, and not investigative leads, new cases, and arrests that would not otherwise have happened.   As a result, American citizens remain unnecessarily vulnerable to crime and acts of terrorism.

For much of the past decade, countless meetings, commissions, studies, position papers, and plans have been developed by the government, law enforcement associations, and private companies - none of which have done much to create a sense of a solution, or even a standard approach - to the information sharing problem.  The focus is often on the obstacles to information sharing rather than solutions that are available.

Communities are encouraged to develop local solutions, but are given no authoritative guidance and are left to their own resources to plan, design, and obtain funding.    The federal government has approved the establishment of “fusion centers” throughout the country for this purpose, and the three federal departments are developing systems that will integrate the data from federal agencies and plan to make portions of that available to regional systems, once established, but most observers and participants concede that these efforts are severely limited by the type and amount of data that they contain.

With a technical solution such as LInX and similar systems readily available, at a cost far less than most ongoing technical projects (LInX can be brought to an average-size city in the United States for less than $2M), one struggles to explain the slow movement on this important public safety mandate.  

2.   No leadership  has emerged to provide a concept of law enforcement information sharing at a national level; executives continue to rotate in and out of key positions, and no definitive standards have been put forth explicitly addressing the type of data that is expected to be shared. 

While it is difficult to find anyone “opposed” to information sharing, it is also hard to find dedicated supporters in positions of authority who are prepared to assume responsibility to develop and implement a national system of information sharing – or even to provide authoritative guidance on what a national system should look like. 

Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff identified three attributes of government that combine to limit effectiveness and progress.   First, bureaucrats too often rely on anecdotal evidence, when methodologically sound data is available.   For information sharing,  this has permitted a widespread acceptance of the cultural and political difficulties that have been traditionally associated with information sharing, without taking time to recognize that in this new era, with a new generation in charge, information sharing is regarded as a good thing. 

Second, Chertoff said that bureaucrats are reluctant to act when their jurisdiction is not clear – he calls this the “not my job” approach to leadership.  Federal executives are particularly guilty here, as practically all senior leaders agree with the need, agree that the federal government should lead the effort, agree that funds are available, but they can’t figure out whose job it is to make it happen. 

Third, Chertoff suggested that we continue to be constrained by officials with one eye on their watch, concerned that they may be transferred, they or their bosses may retire, or there may be an election that will change the political alignment – therefore they are overly concerned with their next assignment, next job, or retirement and reluctant to initiate something that may not be relevant to “their watch.”

Chertoff’s triad of bureaucratic excuses strikes at the heart of the concept of “performance ethics."  When juxtaposed against public performance expectations, public safety, and national security, all three categories of excuses seem lame.  But if Chertoff is correct, they play a major role in the motivation and decision-making of those currently occupying leadership positions today. 

Applying this to law enforcement information sharing, I suggest that Mr.  Chertoff assert his leadership in three areas, which I believe will dramatically move the ball forward: 

A.  Force a determination of what records must be shared.  Despite evolving standards published by the government and other interested parties, no federal organization has made a determination of the nature and scope of the data that is needed to be included in information sharing systems.  This is of critical importance, because the extent to which dots can be connected is directly related to the amount and the value of the dots in the system.  Determination as to what will be shared is currently left to participating agencies – all of whom are motivated to protect their interests and share only that information that “will not hurt”.

The LInX  Charter commits its participants to sharing “all legally sharable information” a standard first articulated, then rejected, by the Department of Justice.  No other entity has given any guidance on this issue.  As a result, data being shared in emerging information sharing systems widely varies.  Some agencies are sharing everything, some are screening, or filtering out “sensitive data”, others are sharing only their closed cases, still others are sharing only their indices.  Some recalcitrant agencies continue to share nothing.  No entity has emerged to develop a standard for sharable information

B.  Assume Leadership and create an environment of local leaders.   Despite federal mandates and plans, no federal agency currently assumes responsibility for addressing national information sharing.  Even though all the federal agencies agree that information sharing must be a priority, none are willing to be held accountable for a lack of success.   And without a leader to force accountability on the agencies themselves, there is no motivation for any agency to take serious steps towards either becoming a leader in the information sharing arena or to do anything other than look like they’re working on the problem.   The Department of Homeland Security, despite being fraught with problems coordinating the efforts of its many agencies, is the most appropriate agency for this task.    DHS should accept responsibility to plan the national information sharing effort and convene an interdepartmental working group made up of senior operational executives from DOJ and DOD, who will jointly manage the national program.   

C.  Grant Management & National Standards.  The federal government has recognized that information sharing starts at the local level.  In order to work towards the goal of information sharing, it has provided substantial financial grant assistance to local agencies to improve their information sharing programs and systems.  The problem is that the federal government hasn’t thought its plan through any further.  Grants are being handed out left and right without any consideration as to what the money is being used for and whether its uses are actually providing effective solutions to the information sharing problem.  Thanks to these liberal grants, stadiums and malls across the country are getting new security cameras, police departments are replacing existing radios with new sophisticated ones – all needed improvements but having little impact on information sharing.   We are also seeing ineffective, flawed, and incompatible privately owned and developed information sharing systems springing up across the country.  These technological knick-knacks and new information sharing systems, costing billions of dollars, cannot communicate effectively with one another, do not meet any sort of national standards, and quite simply have further complicated the problem of information sharing.  In order to stem this waste of grant money, grants need to be allocated based on an information sharing plan.  This plan would only grant funds to proposals for information sharing systems that meet proven standards of effectiveness.

It would seem logical that the five standards and the approach that have produced significant operational successes for NCIS and the LInX system should serve as the foundation for a national system.    These five standards have been fully adopted by NCIS in the management of the LInX program, and are made part of the Charter document that has been signed by every one of the more than 400 law enforcement organizations now participating in LInX.   

First, participants must be committed to sharing all the data from their record systems that can be legally shared.  Not some data, or most data, but all data.  Including all the data in an information sharing system is the only way to assure that the dots that need to be connected are, in fact, available in the system so they can be connected.

Second, to ensure that “all the data” is made available, local law enforcement leaders must develop a “regional governance” capability, which provides an authoritative oversight over state, federal, and local information sharing efforts.  The vast majority of the nation’s 20,000 law enforcement agencies are independent; that is they report to independent elected officials (mayors, governors, or presidents) but are not organized into a national chain of command.  Each of these agencies has to decide and agree to the rules, processes and standards required to make information sharing effective. 

Third, technology is necessary to enable the project, and technology must be capable of producing the “composite record” for the community by retrieving all relevant data with a single search, producing the document on demand from whatever source maintains it, and providing an analytical capability that permits instant analysis of the connection between seemingly innocuous pieces of information.

Fourth, security must be paramount in a law enforcement environment.  The sensitivity of law enforcement records is such that no professional law enforcement organization can participate unless it is assured that its data, once available to the entire community, will be handled professionally and kept secure.  Despite the need to make information available on a widespread basis, it still should be made available only to those with a bona fide need to know, and once made available, must be protected from improper use.  Participating agencies and the general public must be assured of this.

Finally, the data can’t simply sit in data bases, awaiting a query.  For information sharing to be of maximum benefit to public safety, the data must be continually and fully exploited and made available to tactical, operational, and strategic law enforcement use, as well as supporting policy and resource allocation decisions.

In my view, these same standards should be put in place on a national basis to guide all developing information sharing efforts throughout the community:

Conclusion:

There is a lack of seriousness in our national information sharing program.  There are no national standards and no one is accountable.  Great sums are being spent, yet only a handful of systems in operation can demonstrate that they are getting the results envisioned by the American public.  I believe that government leaders have an ethical responsibility to assume responsibility to change things.

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