Statewide database of crime records is on the way

Kirstin Dorsch, Jacksonville Business Journal

February 17, 2006 

TALLAHASSEE-- Officers wanting to learn whether a Jacksonville criminal has a history in Miami must currently call, send a fax or e-mail someone.

By March 2007, they'll be able to get the information themselves - and quicker.

The Florida Criminal and Juvenile Justice Information Systems Council, a body of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, is creating a network to enable criminal justice workers to search a statewide database of crime records.

"Very few criminals commit all their actions in a very localized area," FDLE spokeswoman Brenda Owens said. "The ability to share across counties and jurisdictions will be a very noticeable benefit to the criminal justice system."

She said the department hopes to create a seemless network so people can use their existing systems to access other data in the state.

The Florida Law Enforcement eXchange will be created in three phases and is scheduled to be complete in March 2007. Phase one, statewide data mapping, should be finished by spring, and building data infrastructure for the system in phase two is also expected to be completed in 2006. Phase three consists of implementing the system and data transmission across the state.

Phase one involves establishing regional data sharing systems, a task budgeted $10.4 million in 2004. The state, and project budget, is split into seven geographic regions. Northeast Florida received $500,000.

Each region has a domestic security task force, established soon after Sept. 11, 2001, Owens said. The regional and FLEX programs are part of the domestic security organization to combat terrorism.

Owens said they hope to connect nationwide eventually. "That's the goal of the [Department of] Homeland Security and of the information sharing. But right now, we are concentrating on Florida."

FLEX will merge the regional connections into a statewide network. According to the FDLE, 95 percent of law enforcement records now are accessible only by the agency that filed them. FLEX will use the Global Justice XML Data Model to create similar fields, allowing records to be searched electronically from any station in the state.

Northeast Florida officials have established the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LInX, a program developed by the military. As of January, 21 jurisdictions in Northeast Florida are on LInX, including all seven county agencies in the Jacksonville area. Of 65 jurisdictions in the region, 44 are expected to be on LInX by march 2007.

Owens said connecting the systems will save the criminal justice system manpower and money.

"As criminal justice is more able to share information, they can solve more crimes and they will be better able to link crimes together." she said.

Mapping of regional systems is beind done through the software called Harvester, developed by Dublin, Ohio-based Sypherlink Inc. Harvester can help phase one of FLEX go faster by finding commonalities among Florida's hundreds of systems electronically, instead of manually, said Sypherlink CEO, James Paat.

Identifiying common features facilitates creating a database accessible from all of Florida's disparate systems.

Paat said Florida's regional approach to building a statewide systems is the best way to go.

"They realize you have to crawl before you walk before you run," he said. "I think that Florida really can be a model state that others can replicate."