Page 50 - GCN, May 2017

case study BIG DATA
NC strengthens its crime
database service
The revamped mobile app will feature responsive design, multifactor authentication and access to federal data sources
BY STEPHANIE KANOWITZ
An app that has cut costs by $12 million annually and helped make North Carolina safer is getting a makeover.
In pilot testing now, Version 2.0 of the Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Au- tomated Data Services (CJLEADS) ap- plication will be able to search federal data sources in addition to the multiple state databases the app currently in- tegrates with.
As part of that new ability, the state is adding multifactor authentication, a step up from the role-based login required now. “That’s really impor- tant to meeting \[the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Divi- sion\] requirements, which we need to meet in order to have access to that federal data,” said John Correl- lus, deputy state CIO and chief data officer.
Additionally, Version 2.0 will be a web-based, fully responsive HTML5 app. The current mobile version functions more like a native app that must be downloaded and installed, he said. The new mobile app will have all the functionality of the desktop version and will not rely on Flash, unlike the current version.
The web-based app has been in use since 2009 and supports about 30,000 users. Besides saving money, it is help- ing criminal justice officials do their jobs more efficiently. For example, a law en- forcement officer arrested the occupants
of a stopped car after running their names through CJLEADS and discover- ing that they had outstanding warrants.
The system uses federated queries and a cloud-based warehouse hosted by the SAS Institute. It is based on the com- pany’s Enterprise BI Server, Enterprise Data Integration Server and Enterprise Miner.
“We feel like we’re protecting our citizens and our law enforcement community better with this tool.”
– JOHN CORRELLUS, NORTH CAROLINA DEPUTY CIO
CJLEADS taps into myriad state da- tabases that house information on criminal court cases, probation, incar- ceration, sex offenses, concealed hand- gun permits, driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, and hunting and fishing licenses.
“From the officer on the street to the magistrate to the prosecutor to the judge to the probation officer...they all have a need for information on a citizen or offender in order to make an informed
decision,” said Carol Burroughs, North Carolina’s assistant deputy state CIO. “Behind the scenes, what’s happening is they’re actually going to an enterprise warehouse where we have combined all of these records and are bringing that back to them through a viewer. It’s just a web-based tool available on any device.”
Before CJLEADS, officials had to search each database individually. The new system presents “a single view of an offender,” Burroughs said. “It was a great efficiency when this came in, and that’s why there’s such widespread adoption.”
The biggest challenges are ensur- ing “the quality of the data \[and\] de- veloping the right analytics tools to match the data appropriately,” Bur- roughs said. “We have web service calls that go out to some of these systems, \[and\] some of the systems send us batch data. It depends upon the data and how current the data has to be when the user is using that
information.”
North Carolina spends about $8 mil-
lion per year on CJLEADS, including hosting, software, round-the-clock sup- port, new development and administra- tion costs.
“We feel like we’re protecting our citi- zens and our law enforcement commu- nity better with this tool,” Correllus said, adding that it has been a boon to produc- tivity. “Quicker decisions are made by be- ing able to access one single view.” •
46 GCN MAY 2017 • GCN.COM