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Surviving Budget Cuts: You need to give up control to gain control

I just returned from the 2009 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference that was held in Denver, CO.  It was a very nice conference. I attended my usual CJIS and LEIM meetings, sat in on a few very informative workshop sessions, and (of course) reconnected with many friends and collegues.  One  particular conversation topic that came up many times was the budget problems state and municipal jurisdictions were facing and how many law enforcement agencies had or were about to lay off staff to accomodate fair-share budget cuts imposed by state, county, or city managers.

What made this matter of particular interest to me was that one of my law enforcement friends was considering paying back a grant they received to hire additional officers becuase they would (within a year) end up having to lay-off an equal number of officers to accomodate a nearly $3,000,000 budget cut the City was going to impose on the agency. I asked him what his Chief was doing to build a case to prevent from having to take the cut? From the tone of his response, it didn’t sound like they were confident that such a strategy would be successful. He then remarked how unfair it was that when the local Fire Department asked for a new station, they received the money to build it without question…but when the police department makes a comparable request, it fails to pass.

So, I looked him in the eye and asked him…”So what is YOUR firehouse?”

An agency’s budget is built (for the most part) on a political processs pretty much based on the old value equation. In other words the level of agency funding is based on the percieved public safety value of the actions and materiel to be funded; (VALUE=BENEFIT/COST).  Agencies that want to protect or enhance their budget must take strategic (and political) actions to build the case that cutting their budget would be detrimental to sustaining safe communities.

Just as a Fire Department can easily show the value of a new fire truck or firehouse, law enforcement agencies must be able to articulate the consquences of either cutting their budget or failing to fund new initiatives, and they must do it in a way that captures the political will necessary to support their cause. Unfortunately, many agencies try to make the best of the situation and strip their internal capacity and/or reduce their services in other areas to compensate for the cuts, leaving themselves open to public criticism.

I suggested to my friend that instead of “sucking it up” and accepting the cut, that he (and his chief) figure out a strategy to build public and (if necessary) private support for either finding alternatives to the budget cut or (at a minimum) reducing the amount of the budget cut they are expected to take.

I am a big believer in the “shifting the burden” strategy whereby the law enforcement agency (or any agency for that matter) would layout the public safety problems faced by the community, the operational strategies required to address those issues, and an estimated cost of the resources (by budget category) to undertake those actions (performance based budget), and then present that to the County Manager/Council, City Manager/Council, etc., and let them decide what will be funded or not funded. The key here is to SHIFT THE BURDEN TO THEM TO SAY NO TO ADDRESSING PARTICULAR CRIME CONCERNS.

Unfortunately, many agencies will be uncomfortable with this strategy and would instead perfer to set their own priorities–some may disagree with me, but agencies that do this (in my opinion) leave themselves open to the risks associated with being held to those objectives without being given the resources to be successful. I also see the “shift the burden” strategy as a) a way for agencies to hold their state, county, city leadership accountable for fully funding public safety initiatives and b) as a strategy to prevent those same leaders from cutting initiatives they originally agreed to fund–this puts the burden for establishing the value of law enforcement in the hands of those with the checkbook, and…

What politician is going to want to tell their constituants that they want less public safety?

Your thoughts and comments welcomed..r/Chuck

NIEM and JIEM: Two Great Tastes In Justice Information Sharing

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

"Shovel-Ready" Projects for Public Safety

Change you can believe in!  Change is here!  Yes we can! 

While we eagerly wait to see how our 44th President translates these memorable election mottos into tangible projects for rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, one colleague of mine, Charles Jennings, CEO of Swan island Networks stepped up and laid out eleven very forward leaning “shovel-ready” ideas for investing in America’s “virtual” infrastructure.  Below I point out three of Charles’ ideas that have a direct impact on law enforcement and public safety,; and include some personal thoughts.

- National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) – Let’s speed-up development and implementation of NIEM; this is critical for expediting law enforcement and homeland security information sharing programs such as N-DEx, LInX, ISE-SAR, and others.

- Rural Broadband – While this is good for our ecomomy, it’s VERY good for small rural law enforcement agencies, many of which who still do not have decent internet access.

- State/Local/Tribal Clouds – While this is good for agencies of any size, this will (again) benefit the smaller law enforcement agencies who don’t have the time, expertise, or resources to be in the “IT” business; shared-services using in-the-cloud strategies can bring advanced capabilitis to these agencies very quickly.

You can see Charles’ paper in its entirety here –> http://www.swanisland.net/solutions/Shovel-Ready.pdf

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcomed…r/Chuck

Information Sharing: When they say it's about the money, it's NOT about the money…

Some who read this may take it as a rant against agencies/providers who say we need more money for implementing law enforcement information sharing (LEIS), but in-fact, this post is really about understanding the landscape and influencing the choices and priorities of state and county policymakers and the affected law enforcement executives.

Let me first layout the agency landscape :

• There are about 14,000 state and local law enforcement agencies;
• In roughly 3,000 counties;
• That make up the 50 states of our great nation.

Now let’s layout the funding landscape:

• For 2008 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allocated $3,200,000,000 (billion) for state and local assistance grants;
• In that same year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) made another $2,000,000,000 available;
• For 2008 that’s a total of $4,200,000,000;
• For 2007 that number was $4,500,000,000;
• For 2009, we are hoping that number stays about the same or goes even higher.
• To all these numbers you must add funding from the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, Department of Health and Human Services, or State funding sources for LEIS.

Finally, let me lay out the cost landscape for LEIS:

• In my eight or so years of experience of building and deploying LEIS, I’ve seen the costs associated with hooking up an agency to vary between $5,000 and $80,000 per record system connection;
• On average though, I feel the safer number is between about $20,000 and $40,000;
• For arguments sake, let’s use the high number of $40,000.

Now comes the fun part…let’s do some math…

• To be realistic, let’s say that 25% of the 14,000 agencies are already sharing information;
• That leaves about 10,000 agencies left to connect;
• At $40,000 an agency, we would need a total of $560,000,000 (Million);
• Divide that by the 3,000 counties, and we will need about $190,000 per county;
• If we do this over three years, that’s only $63,000 per county, per year for three years!

With (on average) every county getting about $1,400,000 every year for law enforcement and public safety (out of the $4.2 Billion allocated annualy), I would like to think that we (collectively) can see the benefits of LEIS enough to spare $63,000  a year for three years to get it done.

Here’s where the issue of choices and priorities comes in.  If we can agree that the money IS there, what we really need to work on are ways to convince the policymakers and law enforcement exectutives in those counties that investing a little in LEIS is a better investment than whatever it is their currently spending their part of the $4,200,000,000 on.  Do you agree?

I’d also like to know what role youthink the IACP, MCC and NSA would play here?

Thoughts and comments invited…and yes, I used a calculator…;-)

r/Chuck Georgo

What Gets Measured Gets Done…Using Evaluation to Drive Law Enforcmement Information Sharing

Tom Peters liked to say “what gets measured gets done.”  The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) took this advice to heart when they started the federal Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART) (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/part/) to assess and improve federal program performance so that the Federal government can achieve better results. PART includes a set of criteria in the form of questions that helps an evaluator to identify a program’s strengths and weaknesses to inform funding and management decisions aimed at making the program more effective.

I think we can take a lesson from Tom and the OMB and begin using a formal framework for evaluating the level of implementation and real-world results of the many Law Enforcement Information Sharing projects around the nation.  Not for any punitive purposes, but as a proactive way to ensure that the energy, resources, and political will continues long enough to see these projects achieve what their architects originally envisioned. 

I would like to propose that the evaluation framework be based on six “Standards for Law Enforcement Information Sharing” that every LEIS project should strive to comply with; they include:

1. Active Executive Engagement in LEIS Governance and Decision-Making;

2. Robust Privacy and Security Policy and Active Compliance Oversight;

3. Public Safety Priorities Drive Utilization Through Full Integration into Daily Operations;

4. Access and Fusion of the Full Breadth and Depth of Regional Data (law enforcement related);

5. Wide Range of Technical Capabilities to Support Public Safety Business Processes; and

6. Stable Base of Sustainment Funding for Operational and Technical Infrastructure Support.

My next step is to develop scoring criteria for each of these standards; three to five per standard, something simple and easy for project managers and stakeholders to use as a tool to help get LEIS “done.”

I would like to what you think of these standards and if you would like to help me develop the evaluation tool itself…r/Chuck

Chuck Georgo
chuck@nowheretohide.org
www.nowheretohide.org 

ISE to Agencies: "Ok, I asked nicely, NOW I'm serious!…Share damn it!"

Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a new federal policy [document] that aims to increase terrorism related information sharing among members of the Intelligence Community (IC). The policy “directs agencies to work with their human resources departments to add items about information-sharing skills and behaviors to performance appraisals.”

The release of this policy effectively means that the sixteen politically appointed IC agency heads, all of their deputies, the hundreds of senior executive department heads, and thousands of mid-level division managers failed in their efforts to get their folks to share. I guess the thinking is that adding a sentence of two to the performance appraisal of each of the 200,000+ individuals in those agencies will make information sharing happen–wow, what a sad commentary to the failure of leadership in these agencies.

To me, information sharing is a “means to an end” and NOT an end in itself. Before you can say that you do not have sufficient information sharing, you should be able to say (specifically) what the impact of not having that information is to your mission activities. The diagram below illustrates a Knowledge Model (similar to one that I picked up during my work at NSA).

As you can see from the diagram–information leads to knowledge of “something”, and that something causes (or requires) specifc action, and the specifc action leads to “real-world-effects” (like the prevention or disruption of terrorism or other criminal activity). Some examples of impact statements include:

   - ”We are unable to ascertain the threats to water supplies in the city of xxx…”
   - ”We cannot determine the whereabouts of bad guy xxx…”
   - ”We do not understand the objectives of the xxx threat group…”

If you follow my logic so far, then you also have come to the conclusion that the lack of information sharing is really a management issue, driven by internal agency data sharing and security policies and should not be left to the purview of individuals within those agencies. Here are a couple other points to ponder in support of this thought:

1. I believe information sharing should primarily be implemented through technological mechanisms; take it out of the hands of agency individuals and political culture.

2. it should also be driven by MISSION needs and NOT just for the sake of sharing; many analysts will tell you we share TOO much irrelevant information and NOT ENOUGH of the stuff they really need.

3. No single individual in any agency should have the ability to withold information from another agency; if this is the case, there’s a manager somewhere who requires some alignment.

4. If individuals do hold back information, they do so against the will of their leadership (assumingly); most agency employees are loyal and will follow (to a fault sometimes) their manager’s will.

Comments and thoughts welcomed…r/Chuck

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.

1. Strategy – Develop a regional law enforcement plan detailing areas of concern and how to leverage information sharing for the desired impact.
2. 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.
3. Data – Identify and agree to integrate ALL relevant data. The key to success is sharing more not less information.  
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Enterprise Architecture v2.0

After some time thinking about my last post about EA being dead, I decided to resurrect it and marry it up with three other diciplines that I have been working in for the last 10 years; that being Strategic Management, Business Process Management and (now) Service Oriented Architecture.  If you’re going to use the word “enterprise” in the context of architecture, then doesn’t it make sense to include the WHOLE enterprise? 

So, the result of my thinking is shown below - I’m calling it EA v2.0.  When you look at the diagram, the one thing to pay attention to is the relationships between the layers of the model, and not so much what’s in each layer.  The fact is that fairly mature methodologies exist for every layer.  This model is my attempt to build better understanding about the linkages BETWEEN the layers.  In other words, there are a lot of models out there for conducting strategic planning, business process modeling, workflow management, and technology archtiecture; however, I have yet to find anything that explains in simple terms how all this crap ties together in a way that organization executives can understand.

So, take  a look at my EA v2.0 reference model below and tell me what you think….r/Chuck