National Blueprint

DOJ launches new information-sharing network to help current local pilot
| 05.12.2006 | 06:48:21 | Views: 5216 | ID:

May 12 '06: Officials at the Department of Justice told Government Computer News that a new network designed to create a "card catalogue"-type system will be installed to allow federal, state and local law enforcement to collect and disseminate information on criminal activity.

The National Data Exchange system, also called N-DEx, "will complement the Justice's existing program, known as the Regional Data Exchange System (R-DEx), which is designed to provide search engine-like access to federal, state and local law enforcement data."

GCN also reported last year that the R-DEx was begun as a pilot program in the Seattle area to help with real-time information sharing. "R-DEx houses case data from Justice Department agencies, including the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Marshals Service. The prisons and marshals agencies provide nationwide data to R-DEx, while other Justice components provide regional data."

Information sharing among federal agencies has become a top priority - calls for greater cooperation and federal efforts reflect a greater focus imposed on the ability to transmit, amalgamate and analyze information to help with law enforcement, preparedness and terrorist threat mitigation.

Information-sharing among federal agencies has also meant a greater reliance on open-source information according to Washington Technology. In a report released by Congress in April called "intelligence Issues for Congress", lawmakers found a "rising dependence on open sourcing ... partly due to a requirement for a broad range of information about many regions and subjects throughout the world."

And last Year, the Department of Homeland Security gave about $1.24 million to research designed to "hunt for security bugs in open source software" and to improve commercial tools used for source code analysis. Meanwhile, the BBC reported that searches on the internet can lead people to dangerous sites which can infect unsuspecting computers with viruses, adware and spyware according to new research.

Vance Hitch, the Justice Department's CIO told GCN that the N-DEx and R-DEx networks were important to integrate. "We felt it was important to hook up with existing regional systems," Hitch said describing the possibility of having more than 200,000 users "spread across 18,000 enforcement agencies in the country," GCN reported.

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