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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.

Law Enforcement/Justice SOA…Anyone Doing it?

It’s been a while since I’ve added anything to my blog.  Largely because I’ve been engaged in a wonderful project to help a State Police agency develop an EA and a Service-Oriented approach to replacing their Hotfiles and Message Switch.  I’d be interested in learning about anyone  else engaged in a similar effort, or ayone developing a law enforcement or justice Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)…Please email me at chuck@nowheretohide.org. 

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

EA Dead? Long Live SOA!

I just finished reading through Thomas Erl’s latest book SOA: Principles of Service  Design. It is a great read for those getting involved in Service Oriented Architecture, yet one thing he doesn’t adress head-on is where does Enterprise Architecture end and SOA begin?  All he says is that “SOA spans BOTH enterprise and application architecures.” - not much help.

With apologies to every organization that’s invested boatloads of money in developing an EA, I’m starting to believe EA in general is dead.  Why do I think it’s dead?  In my eight years of doing EA, I have yet to see an EA effort that meets my five criteria for success:

1. EA championed by senior executive from start to finish
2. EA addresses all levels–business needs, systems capabilities, technical standards
3. EA development followed through to produce at least one full iteration of products
4. EA products integrated in to systems acquisition and operational planning processes
5. EA success evaluated based on achievement of real business results

Because of this, organization’s are growing weary of  their EA efforts – I have seen many EA efforts come to a screeching halt recently.  And, with EA on life-support, in comes SOA–tada! 

Tell me what you think…r/Chuck

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Can We Share? Getting Agencies to Give-Up Their Data

Today’s blog is about “information sharing” – it’s all the rage!  You can’t pick up a trade magazine or newspaper without reading about it.  Every agency wants to do it.  Want better national security? Community safety?  You’ll need effective data sharing to be successful.  Even though the technology and processes exist to make it a reality, most projects are still missing the most critical success factor of all…namely, THE DATA. 

After studying data sharing projects for more than eight years, I found that every data sharing project is still missing information critical to addressing operational goals.  What’s needed is a strategy to address the political and cultural issues surrounding data sharing efforts so that those who hold the data feel comfortable and willing to share ALL of their data. 

I’m currently working on a set of tools to help address this problem.  The tool kit will include:

• Five critical success factors for getting agencies to give-up all of their shareable data

• Three ways to deal with executives on issues of trust, security and privacy

• How to use a “shift-the-burden” strategy for dealing with politics and culture

if you’re interested in collaborating on this with me, email me … chuck@nowheretohide.org

r/Chuck

How to Really Screw-Up Up an SOA Implementation

It’s impossible to goto a law enforcement information sharing conference these days and NOT hear about this thing called a “Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).”

One of the big questions I hear asked is “How do I go about implementing an SOA?”

If you do a google on “Service Oriented Architecture” (use the quotes to be fair) you will find that Google lists 11,500,000 documents related to SOA. If you go to Amazon.com and do the same search, you’ll see 609 books on the subject.

The majority of these documents and books basically tell you to do the same five things to transition your organization’s information technology infrastructure to one based upon SOA principles: 1) have governance, 2) have a roadmap, 3) take one bite at a time, 4) train your staff for SOA, and 5) use open standards.

I don’t want to dispute or debate any of what they have to say; I’m certain it’s all good. Instead what I thought I would do is mix things up a bit and share with you what I consider to be the top ten things you can do to really screw-up up a move to SOA. Let’s begin…

1. Run and tell your CEO or Agency Executive that SOA is going to save the day by solving all of their IT problems. Tell them it’s easy. Show them the glossy brochure your vendor gave you; that’ll really impress them.
2. While you’re at it, tell them that you won’t need all the money they gave you this year. With all this stuff about reuse you’ve been reading, SOA is going to save them a boatload of money.
3. Treat moving to SOA just like any other IT project. It’s still just hardware and software, no use getting all excited. You just need SOA requirements, and then it’s coding, testing, and deployment.
4. Keep the “operator” folks away from the effort. You know that as soon as they get their fingers on the project, they’re going to want to muck it up with business needs and process diagrams.
5. Plan to convert all of your applications to SOA all at once. In fact, go ahead and announce the date you’re going to shut-down the mainframe. That will illustrate your commitment to SOA.
6. Inform the mainframe COBOL programmers and DB2 admins that they need to find new jobs and then immediately put in a request with HR to hire a dozen XML and SOAP programmers.
7. Don’t waste your time on developing a plan or roadmap (aka enterprise architecture) to move to SOA. No one really reads all those documents; and after all, you have the functional specifications from your existing applications.
8. Immediately go out and buy an ESB from your favorite vendor. Don’t know what one is? Don’t worry, your vendor will know, and they will be glad to come in and just plug everything together. SOA, done.
9. Also make sure you develop as many services as possible. You’ll be able to justify your move to SOA based on the number of services you develop; the more you develop, the better you’ll look.
10. Finally, if all else fails screw-up up your SOA project, then try this – take your best techie and put them in charge of the effort, then sit back and enjoy the fun!

I hope that you enjoyed my little diversion from the serious side of SOA, and I also hope that you were able to see through my satire and recognize some of the silly things organizations do to torpedo what should be a fun and beneficial experience for every organization.

BTW, no vendors, programmers, or other techies were actually harmed in the writing of this blog, at least none that I know of.

Kudos to OMB "Proud to Be" Initiative

On May 31, 2007, Clay Johnson released a memorandum to the President’s Management Council to annouce the establishment of an effort to get agencies to document “Where they would be proud to be” in two years (2009).  This memorandum represents OMB’s next step in its effort to get Federal agencies to “Green” in each of the five categories of the President’s Management Agenda – Strategic Management of Human Capital, Competitive Sourcing, Improved Financial Performance, Expanded eGovernment, and Performance Improvement (aka Budget and Performance Integration).

OMB is to be commended for continuing to devise creative ways to get the attention of Federal program executives focused on what is really happening in their agencies and the extent to which a) resources are effectively applied to the problems at hand, b) processes and infrastructure investments directly support delivery of meaningful services (outputs), and c) those servies do in-fact lead to meaningful results (outcomes).

In my opinion, this latest OMB strategy takes government performance accountability to the next level by making it “more personal” – Clay specifically asked each agency to indicate “where they would be proud to be on July 1, 2008 and July 1, 2009″ with respect to each of the five PMA initiatives.  If successful, this initiative will engage agency executives to make a personal statement of what they would be proud to achieve in the stated timeframes.  And, I am all for strategies and initiatives that put performance planning more in the hands of agency operators than in detached planning staffs.

The entire 78 page memorandum can be seen at: http://www.cio.gov/documents/PTB5_Memo_Attachments.pdf

Comments welcome…r/Chuck

Welcome to my Blog!

Hi there, this blog was established to inspire discussion around the challenges of using technology and business processes to enhance the effectiveness of law enforcement and national security operations.  I will be commenting on issues related to:

• Using technology to enhance public safety

• Technology planning and project management

• Information/data sharing in general

• Politics related to data integration

• Technologies available for data integration

• Interesting projects I see related to this effort

• News items/stories I’ve seen

• Other stuff that comes to mind

In the mean time, feel free to email me at chuck@nowheretohide.org with subjects you’d like to see discussed

Stay tuned for more…r/Chuck