The ability to collect, process, and manage massive amounts of data is essential for law enforcement agencies working to identify and respond to emerging threats and to carry out their mandate of keeping the public safe. With the rise of digital technologies, agencies can collect and analyze vast amounts of data. These modern digital tools aid in investigations, identify crime hotspots, and build upon community policing initiatives. Additionally, data can be used to predict crime trends, allowing law enforcement agencies to stay ahead of the curve and adopt preventative measures.

The data environment can be complex and challenging. Informatica's Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) eases this complexity and powers insight for real-time, trusted results.

The Problem

There are several key data challenges associated with advancing public safety, building public trust, and developing community-oriented policing:

• Absence of a single view of high-quality law enforcement and public safety data

• Lack of data collaboration across various departments to effectively respond to crime and public crises

• Minimal contextual data insights

• Inability to automate investigative processes for timely responses

• Deficiencies in protecting citizen data and other sensitive information while ensuring public transparency

• Overcoming personnel shortages combined with manually intensive data collection

• Lack of automated data workflows and a real-time view of incidents, case information and more

The Solution

IDMC is a good place to start looking for the best that the industry has to offer to address the problem of too much data. Informatica's platform provides the most comprehensive, end-to-end data management solution available on the market. IDMC can discover the data you need, catalog that data so you can find and understand it, and govern that data with common definitions, data flow and policy processes.

It can provide controlled access, protection, and cleansing. IDMC also helps master data to provide an integrated and correlated single record of a person, place or object. This mastered view is essential when the data is created and collected hourly in a multi-hybrid environment such as with multiple cloud, on-premises, and IoT sources (sensors).

With IDMC you can overcome the complex data problem to:

• Achieve a single, 360-degree view of crime—connecting the dots by integrating people, location, behavior, and other trusted data to provide context and a complete view of information

• Share and collaborate on timely data in real time across departments and agencies

• Improve operational and investigative performance to mitigate personnel shortages with artificial intelligence and machine learning — continually evaluating data from sources such as images, videos and devices to provide data-driven recommendations to improve operational performance

• Automate sensitive and private data protection based on policies and mandates

• Drive community-oriented policing initiatives — improving collaboration between government and law enforcement agencies by facilitating secure data exchange for community-based preventative measures

• Create smart cities for public safety by integrating trusted data generated from smart-city infrastructure to help monitor and prevent crimes

Case Studies

More than 300 U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies use Informatica’s intelligent data management solutions to leverage data for better mission results. At the federal government level this includes the major law enforcement agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense.

At the state and city law enforcement levels, recent customers benefiting from Informatica capabilities include the Departments of Law Enforcement for the states of Florida and Virginia, a top-three large city police department, and the California Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS).

• Florida and Virginia: To help promote their state’s public safety, these departments collaborate with local, state, and federal criminal justice agencies to protect their citizens. To participate in the FBI’s national crime reporting statistics and analytics program, they used Informatica Master Data Management (MDM) to receive, cleanse, match, and process data in the format required by the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

• A large city police department: One of the largest metropolitan police departments in the country partners with Informatica to increase public safety efforts with data-driven decision-making. By converting crucial data assets for consumption into analytical solutions and increasing visibility through a centralized data repository, the department is making trusted data readily available where and when it’s needed most.

• California Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS): This system allows the state to access and compile standardized data from 44 locations into the state’s first unified homeless data warehouse. With consistent data, California will be able to enhance its understanding of the challenges impacting individuals experiencing homelessness and make data-driven policy decisions aimed at preventing and ending homelessness while improving public safety.

“We are one step closer to establishing a comprehensive homeless data warehouse to capture local information, better understand the services being provided to individuals experiencing homelessness, and measure our progress,” said Business, Consumer Services and Housing (BCSH) Agency Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez, who also chairs the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council. “We are thankful to all 44 California Continuums of Care for signing on to be part of this effort.”

Informatica IDMC has more than 30 years of global experience helping law enforcement agencies maximize the value of their data to meet the demands of modern policing and public safety.

Michael R. Anderson is chief strategist public sector for Informatica.