i2 CEO Bob Griffin receives Queen's Award from HM Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, Hugh Duberly Esq CBE

Dressed in his traditional royal garb, HM Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, Hugh Duberly Esq CBE bestowed the Queen’s Award to i2 for the second year in a row. The Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, Mark Lloyd, read from the official royal scroll at a ceremony attended by hundreds of i2 employees at the company’s Cambridge, UK headquarters on 15 July. 

The event marked a positive milestone in the company’s two decade history providing solutions for law enforcement, national security, defence and the private sector.

The Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, Mark Lloyd, reads from the the official royal scroll

“Winning this award for the second year running is a fitting tribute to the continuing achievements of the company and our employees,” said i2 CEO Robert Griffin. “The successes of our products in helping our customers collaborate and share information, investigate, predict, prevent and defeat the world’s most sophisticated criminal and terrorist threats has been an instrumental factor in this achievement.”

A day prior, Mr. Griffin and i2 employee Tracey Ellis attended a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace for all the Queen’s Award winners.

At the same time, there are still many challenges to face before information sharing becomes de riguer across local, state, national and international boundaries. To better understand and communicate these issues, i2 hosted an information sharing panel at its Americas User Conference earlier this month.

Panelists included Kathleen O’Toole, the Chief Inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate in Ireland, who was previously the Boston, Mass., Police Commissioner. During her time in Boston, she was critical to the founding of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of the nation’s first fusion centers. Deputy Chief Troy Smith of the Grand Junction Police Department in Colorado also offered up his expertise gleaned from his department’s organization  in getting Colorado to be one of the states that has successfully established information sharing state-wide. Tim Riley, a current i2 SVP and former CIO for the Los Angeles Police Department, played a large role in establishing information sharing agreements between the LAPD, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Orange County.  Chriss Knisley, the i2 Assistant Vice President for the COPLINK product line was also in attendance to discuss the technological standpoint of information sharing. i2’s Director of Corporate Communications Mitch Derman moderated the session.

While discussing the solutions to the major pain points in information sharing, the panellists touched on one basic requirement at all levels: the critical need for collaboration. Whether it be between operations and analysts or the federal government and local police departments, it is imperative that the primary goal must be to create a safe environment for citizens and law enforcement officers alike. Deputy Chief Smith and Riley agreed that the inroads that have already been taken toward information sharing are light years ahead of where things used to be earlier in their careers.  However until collaboration and a willingness to share becomes the norm, there are still challenges to tackle.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of collaboration is the need to build relationships.  Chief Inspector O’Toole heartily stressed the importance of uniting operational sworn police officers with the more traditional back-office analysts. Regardless of the environment in which they interact, it is important to train analysts and sworn officers to work together, ask the right questions, and understand the value of using analysis in investigations. She believes that the best way to solve this problem is to bring the two sides together. O’Toole expressed that,  “At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships and co-locating people to the greatest extent possible in some of these centers to work on different operations together… the more time analysts spend with operations people the stronger the relationship and the more valuable the relationship becomes. The BRIC was my pet project, and I spent a lot of time there, and walking through it, one wouldn’t know who was sworn and who wasn’t sworn because analysts were valued as much as the sworn personnel.”

Deputy Chief Smith also emphasized the importance of communication, particularly within and across communities and organizations, to combat the stigma against sharing private information. The recent tragic shootings in Arizona provided a prime example of small pieces of information located in disparate sources that prevented the experts  from being able to access all the puzzle pieces to see the broader picture.  Deputy Chief Smith recognized this as an ongoing issue and organized a forum in Grand Junction, Colo., with public and private organizations to discuss how they could combat such a complicated scenario.  By instigating a collaboration of various members of the community, it not only brought awareness to both law enforcement officials but others such as schools and health center officials who are normally unable or unwilling to share information. Already Grand Junction has seen  noticeable results from their forum. Deputy Chief Smith remarked that “we’ve had some people at a mental health hospital notice certain behaviors, and they were capable of sharing that information in a way that didn’t violate their agreements. Previously they may not have known to call or that we would have been interested in that information.”

Fear of widespread access to private information is one of the largest inhibitors against the adoption of information sharing. Fortunately, through the creation of extensive audit trails and security protocols, Riley and Knisley believe this can be overcome. Records exist for every attempted access to private information to know who is accessing it and what exactly they are looking at. Knisley added that, “In regards to the effective use of information, people are going to think a little bit more about accessing information system that they know is logged. People are not going to log in and search for someone they might get in trouble for later if they know their name is attached to it.”

Your insights are welcome on this important topic.

Led by Brian McIlravey, co-CEO of PPM 2000, and i2’s Mark Massop, Director and Solutions Specialist, the webinar demonstrated how the products significantly reduce the time and effort required of analysts to turn routine data into actionable intelligence – the key to any successful investigation.

Whether countering cybercrime, investigating fraud or monitoring terrorist networks, time spent combing through case summaries and databases is time lost as illicit activity continues. By transforming routine information in flat reports into visual elements that can easily be analyzed, i2 and PPM’s combined solutions equip analysts with the tools needed to swiftly navigate data, identify relationships and present actionable intelligence to prevent and/or mitigate incidents.

The integration of these solutions will help customers protect their bottom lines, their reputations and most importantly, their customers.

Find out how to quickly unravel criminal and terrorist operations and easily identify their power centers with Social Network Analysis capabilities in Analyst’s Notebook 8.5 from i2. In this webcast, you’ll learn:

Terrorist and criminal activity can involve seemingly unconnected people, interactions, and organisations. Massive amounts of data can conceal critical relationships, and pinpointing their importance has typically required highly specialised skills—and resources.

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i2 Booth at IACP 2010

While some policy and process hurdles remain to make information sharing a larger reality nationwide, the technology exists today to make it happen. 

“Using this technology is what our community expects of us,” said Irvine, Calif., Police Chief Dave Maggard.  “If we have the technology available to keep communities safer and catch more criminals, that’s what our mandate should be as law enforcement personnel and it’s something we can all rally around.”

Chief Maggard participated in an i2-sponsored information sharing panel discussion at the recent International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference.  Irvine is a key partner in Orange County’s information sharing system, which is managed by the Integrated Law and Justice Agency of Orange County (ILJAOC).  Built with i2’s COPLINK, it connects the County with Oregon, San Diego, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, Mesa, Ariz., Tucson, Ariz., Spokane, Wash., Sacramento, Calif., and Boston.  With almost a quarter billion records, it’s arguably the world’s largest law enforcement information sharing system.

“Information sharing is no longer a technology issue,” said Bob Griffin, i2 CEO.  “Those barriers have come down.  We’re seeing our customers make great strides in making sharing a reality.  It boils down to overcoming the cultural, political, protocol and process issues.”

The panelists stressed different ways to overcome the non-technology hurdles that still exist.  All agreed that technology is no longer the issue.  The keys to success revolve around people, resources and sustainability.  And it begins with engaging key stakeholders. 

“In Alaska, setting this up for success depended on strong advocates at all levels, including those that were persuasive and persistent throughout the process,” said Bob Griffiths, Executive Director of the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police.

As the Director of the US DOJ, National Institute of Justice (NIJ), National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center in Alaska (NLECTC-AK), Griffiths was instrumental in helping implement Alaska’s Law Enforcement Information Sharing System (ALEISS) that includes 80 agencies.  Using COPLINK, it was the first statewide information sharing program.

Aligning the stakeholders can include experts you would not necessarily expect.  Chief Maggard and the ILJAOC involved city mangers, city attorneys, records personnel and even the public defender’s office.  The goal was complete transparency of the process.

“A major key to success is to identify the full scope up front and have a sustainability plan for information sharing projects,” said Tim Riley, former CIO of the Los Angeles Police Department and now a Senior Vice President at i2.

While with the LAPD, Riley played a pivotal role in implementing a sharing initiative within the Department that brought together four disparate records management systems and linking it with the ILJAOC. 

In Alaska, according to Griffiths, they were really smart about getting the technology up and running, but a “key lesson learned was the lack of a true sustainability plan to keep the system going well into the future as it is challenging to go back to the table and get the additional funding.  You want to do that up front.”  That said, Griffiths is confident that he and his peers can leverage the success they’ve had to keep the program intact.

And speaking of success, immediate ROI is achievable once the technology is up and running. Examples include:

• Alaska — One of the smaller agencies had a pawn shop report about two individuals that stole two rifles and disappeared.  There was limited information including a tattoo that said “Alaska.”  That information was entered into the COPLINK system and only two people came up, with one living nearby.  Since that person had an extensive record, officials were able to identify his associates easily.  The search only took four hours. 
• Los Angeles – There was a serial robbery case that became increasingly violent with every incident.  The only data had been a partial license plate that was inadvertently transcribed.  That information was put into COPLINK. Two of the plate letters – even though they had been transcribed incorrectly – led to identifying a suspect who was caught in the act.  Twenty robbery cases were closed that day and would have otherwise remained unsolved without information sharing in place.   
• Irvine – A donation box for a non-profit was stolen from a fast food restaurant.  CCTV footage caught a video of a suspect that had a tattoo.  A flyer was created based on the CCTV image.  A dispatcher taking initiative entered the distinctive tattoo information into COPLINK and found a match. 

“The great thing about sharing is that you can look at relationships between individuals who may have only spent a fraction of time together, but creates additional leads that you would never have had with a single or multiple record management systems,” said Griffiths.

The panel at IACP was moderated by Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications and the ConnectedCops blog.

For more information about i2, visit http://www.i2group.com/.

Since 2007 the School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology has developed a healthy relationship with Visual Analysis Pty Ltd, the Australasian supplier of i2 products. During 2007 Units of study were developed within both the undergraduate and post graduate Justice programs in an endeavour to provide students with an exposure and understanding of Analyst’s Notebook. Since the introduction of Analyst’s Notebook software into the Justice program as an accredited academic unit of study the student interest has grown considerably.

As the stream of study has now been in existence for three years it is clear that the exercise has been very successful. In addition, the School of Justice is the only University within Australasia to offer students exposure to such professionally recognised software as an accredited academic unit. By ensuring students have a working knowledge of the Analyst’sNotebook program their employment prospects have been enhanced. The enhancement of employment prospects for students has arisen primarily due to the variety and expanse of government agencies and corporate enterprises adopting the use of this software to promote their investigative and analytic capabilities.

Being within an academic institution the standard configuration of offering student exposure to Analyst’s Notebook was to adopt the usual schedule of three hours contact and expect the students to undertake additional usage for the duration of the semester. However,  most students required a re-education about the software usage at each weekly meeting. After feedback from the students and some anecdotal evidence it was decided to reconfigure the offering of the academic Unit into one week intensives with the inclusion of the nexus between Analyst’s Notebookand MapInfo software.

So in 2008 the offering of the Unit, Information Management and Analysis (undergraduate) and Analytical Methods of Intelligence (post graduate)  was rescheduled within the University timetabling as several one week intensives offered during the normal semester timeframe. The student numbers wishing to undertake this unit has incrementally increased until this year when the enrollment numbers have taken a major leap forward. In addition, the favourable response received from students has been overwhelming and illustrates that students are enjoying and gaining from the experience. It should also be mentioned that some of the students have also received employment offers based on their familiarity with Analyst’s Notebook.

Since the first purchase of Analyst’s Notebook licenses for use in the teaching environment of the School of Justice, Visual Analysis has provided some additional licenses as well as student prizes for each student receiving the highest grade while undertaking either the undergraduate or post graduate units of study. This arrangement has enhanced the collaboration between industry and academia.

As a consequence of the increasing demand not only by the students’ enrollments to undertake the Unit of study but also the industry demand it is hopeful that additional licenses are forthcoming to further promote and enhance the student awareness and the facilitation of progressing the application of i2 products within the expanding industry market.

In the future it is intended to increase the implementation of i2 products within the offerings of the School of Justice, commencing in 2011 with the introduction of iBase Designerand User components with the attainment of adequate licenses thus again promoting the employability of students and the exposure within industry.

Friday 16 July 2010 will go down as one of the most memorable days in i2’s history, which stretches back over two decades of high achievement in the battle against crime and terrorism.

The Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire visited our headquarters in Fulbourn, Cambridge to present the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation Category 2010.  During his tour of the offices, he had the opportunity to meet many of our staff and find out more about how the company has grown to become the world leader in developing intelligence and investigations solutions.

CEO, Robert Griffin, who received the award on behalf of i2, emphasised the continuing importance of innovation in the face of increasingly sophisticated criminal and terrorist threats.  He also acknowledged that:  “This is a well-deserved tribute to the tremendous efforts of our staff and it also reflects the continuing loyalty of major clients over many years who have also played a highly-valued role in the development of our market-leading solutions.”

And that seems to be the key to i2’s success: in developing products that truly meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs, there’s no substitute for employees and customers working in perfect harmony.

This is a fantastic achievement and provides important external recognition of the success of our focus on innovation, which has been a central pillar of the company’s development strategy since the company was formed back in 1988.

Friday will be a great day for everyone connected with i2.

By combining key pieces of the i2 Intelligence-Led Operations Platform with components of the Digital Sandbox platform, fusion centers, police departments and federal agencies will be able to:

• Better identify and asses critical infrastructure for risks.
• Leverage the combination of “human sensor” data from law enforcement data collection with automated open source monitoring and prioritization to identify risks.
• Conduct all-source analysis to mitigate threats.

Information Flow Between the Components

This diagram illustrates the information flow between the components and how each system leverages the information power of the other components. The data stored in a COPLINK node provides valuable information for use in the assessment of risk to critical infrastructure components. Within Digital Sandbox Risk Analysis Center, this information is combined with open source and proprietary information in order to assess critical infrastructure risks. The identified critical infrastructure is then pushed back to the COPLINK Activity Correlation Technology (ACT) module for automating suspicious activity alerting and reporting.

Once critical infrastructure is identified in ACT and monitoring begins, all law enforcement information geolocated to buffer zones around the critical infrastructure is evaluated and can be automatically pushed to the RAC where it is combined with open source monitoring to identify potential threats.

As potential threats are identified, the law enforcement data and open source data are available to analysts using Analyst’s Notebook to analyze the information for further action.

I’m personally very excited about this partnership and look forward to further endeavors with Digital Sandbox.  Check out Digital Sandbox’s blog entry on the combined solution as well.

Analyst’s Notebook and iBase are now pre-loaded with World-Check’s extensive database of Politically Exposed Persons (PEP’s) and heightened risk individuals and organisations.  The combination prvovides analysts with immediate access to the world’s most widely adopted open source research and the powerful tools they need to analyse the research in the context of a particular project or investigation.

Read the full press release.