While German security agencies prepare to set up a central
"anti-terror"-database which aims to fuse data from all regional and
national police forces and the secret services, here is another account of
police at "war", database centralization and CTU-style "real-time" computer
aided policing.

Best regards, Eric

+++

NYPD boosts data warehouse to snare bad guys faster
Eric Lai
 
September 01, 2006 (Computerworld)
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxo
nomyName=data_warehousing&articleId=9002917&taxonomyId=55

The New York Police Department, the recipient of a steady stream of plaudits
since launching its Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) more than a year ago, is
continuing to build up the data warehouse underpinning it.

Already under way is the addition of more data sources and real-time alerts
to the IBM-built data warehouse used by the RTCC and the rest of the
37,000-officer force. The data warehouse will also accelerate the NYPD's
famed CompStat crime-mapping tool, though it won't replace it.

"We're in a war, so we need to give our guys in the front lines the best
tools possible," said CIO James Onalfo. The NYPD has spent about $300
million in the past three years on new technology tools.

One of those tools was the RTCC, which was built by systems integrator
Dimension Data Holdings PLC and launched in June 2005. The RTCC is
essentially a centralized help desk tasked with providing quick data to the
department's 8,000 detectives, who used the tool and solved 74% of all
homicides last year.

Though the RTCC has garnered more publicity, the IBM-built data warehouse
underpinning it is more fundamental to the entire NYPD.

In the first phase, completed in the middle of 2005, several years of
historical data, including complaints, arrests, stops, "question and
frisks," criminal summons, shootings and homicides, was imported into an IBM
DB2 8 database running on a pair of IBM P650 eight-way AIX servers,
according to Christine Tyler, an associate partner in the public-sector
practice at IBM's Global Business Services division. The second phase, which
just finished, brought in complaint records going back to 1995 and arrest
data going back to 1990, Tyler said. That now includes free text notes in
the arrest records.

"Now we can look for things like a silver gun or a name on a tattoo, or
search for a person's name," Onalfo said.

Those databases weren't easy to import. The NYPD has about 55 databases
scattered in various locations, most using older technologies such as
FoxPro, Microsoft Access, flat file storage and even mainframe-era
technologies such as VSAM and Adabas that Tyler joked only "old ladies" like
herself are still familiar with.

The third phase, which the NYPD is now beginning, involves connecting
additional data sources from within the NYPD and from outside agencies. In
doing so, the NYPD is moving from homegrown data integration software based
on Cobol to Informatica Corp.'s PowerCenter tools.

"We won't initially save time, but our investment is reusable, so it will
lower future development [costs]," Tyler said.

Informatica is already used to send 911 emergency call data to the RTCC,
which transmits alerts straight to detectives in the field. For the data
warehouse, Informatica will help integrate sources such as the fingerprint
databases run by New York state and the FBI, speeding up a fingerprint
matching process that can take up to three weeks to one that is completed in
seconds, Onalfo said.

Other real-time features in the works include generating alerts when a "stop
and frisk" report matches a name in an outstanding warrant in the data
warehouse. New York is even considering emulating a city of London project
and setting up thousands of cameras at major intersections around the city
to scan license plates in real time, Tyler said (see "Closed-circuit TV may
aid London bombing investigation). The data warehouse would be able to match
those license plates and generate alerts if matches are made.

"Like the private sector, the NYPD data warehouse appears to be all about
CDI -- except in this case, it's not customer data integration, it's
criminal data integration," said James Kobielus, an analyst at Sterling,
Va.-based Current Analysis Inc.

Kobielus, who had not been briefed by the NYPD, said the department's drive
for real time is a good idea and parallels what many Fortune 500 firms are
doing today. To ensure no latency, however, he recommended that the NYPD
consider adding management and monitoring tools as the private-sector
organizations are doing.

The data warehouse, currently 80GB in size and accessible through Cognos 8
business intelligence tools, should grow to about 400GB by the time the
third phase is completed, Tyler said.

Onalfo said he would eventually like the data warehouse to serve as a
central information hub for as many as 30 local government agencies, the
district attorney's office and police departments in neighboring Nassau and
Westchester counties. The data warehouse will also take over CompStat,
launched in 1994 and credited widely for helping reduce crime in the city.
Currently, it takes two to three employees at each precinct a full day to
prepare weekly crime-trend reports. Eventually, precincts will be able to
generate reports in a weekly, daily or even real-time fashion via dashboards
that commanding officers can monitor.

To speed up getting data from reports still mostly written on pen and paper,
the NYPD is trying special wireless pens and pads from IBM that let officers
continue to handwrite reports in the field even as the data is
simultaneously uploaded digitally into a precinct server, Onalfo said.

Asked whether this massive centralization of data should arouse privacy
concerns, Onalfo said that procedures such as proper warrants are still
required to search for data. "It's a well-controlled process. Even I don't
have the ability to look at data," he said.

As for data theft or exposure due to mobile devices that the NYPD is slowly
rolling out to police officers, Onalfo said that laptops and handheld
devices will eventually be protected by a combination of smart cards,
fingerprint-based biometrics and passwords.

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