Alaska Law Enforcement Agencies Win International Award of
Excellence for Leadership in Technology and Interoperability

06/21/05
Anchorage, AK

A statewide consortium of Alaska law enforcement agencies today announced it is winner of an international award for Leadership in Technology presented by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). The Alaska Law Enforcement Information Sharing System (ALEISS), a collaborative crime solving initiative powered by COPLINK® technology, was recognized for excellence in law enforcement communications and interoperability for its technology deployment approach. The awards program is open to local, tribal, state, provincial, federal, and multi-jurisdictional law enforcement agencies that demonstrate superior achievement and innovation in the field of communication and information technology.

“Alaska may be the last frontier, but our law enforcement agencies are proud to be known as an international pioneer of best practices in establishing multi-jurisdictional information sharing initiatives,” said Juneau Assistant Chief of Police Greg Browning, Chairman of the ALEISS Consortium. “We are honored to receive this prestigious award and be selected to share our experiences with other law enforcement agencies at the second annual Alaska Summer Justice Institute Conference taking place in Anchorage in July as well as the 112th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police taking place in Miami this fall.”

Alaska law enforcement agencies began formulating their award-winning approach to information sharing in September 2002 with assistance from the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center – Northwest (NLECTC-NW) and the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police. This included bringing prospective participating agencies together to understand their needs, and developing shared objectives for ALEISS. These were spelled out in a memorandum of understanding between agencies that was unanimously adopted in August of 2003. Subsequently, months of meetings which included legal review and collaboration between participating agencies took place to establish detailed systems requirements and governance policies which include security directives, privacy impacts, operations, training, administration and user protocols.

Following these efforts, Knowledge Computing Corporation’s COPLINK solution (www.coplink.com) was selected for its ability to meet and exceed ALEISS consortium functional and governance requirements and to do so cost effectively. Deployment began in December 2003.

The COPLINK solution that powers ALEISS provides unparalleled analysis and decision support for rapidly identifying criminal suspects, relationships and patterns that can help solve and prevent crime. It works by allowing vast quantities of structured and seemingly unrelated data, currently housed in incompatible computer-based record management systems (RMS) at various agencies, to be organized under a single, highly secure intranet-based platform. One search using known facts from an ongoing criminal investigation can produce qualified leads in seconds – a process that prior to COPLINK, often took days or weeks. Through sophisticated analytics, COPLINK builds ‘institutional memory’, reduces knowledge gaps, and prevents criminals from falling through the cracks.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, information sharing among law enforcement agencies emerged as a critical priority for ensuring the nation’s safety. Unfortunately, these initiatives sometimes fail for reasons that include: lack of early end user involvement; failure to address privacy, security, civil liberty and legal issues up front; inadequate governing policies; inability to effectively scale and incorporate critical technology advances like analytics; and procurement approaches that neglect to incorporate these issues in defining system requirements.

The approach taken by the ALEISS consortium established best practice protocols for selecting, operating and deploying information sharing technology. It now serves as a model enabling other law enforcement jurisdictions across the United States to rapidly and successfully deploy their own initiatives with widespread community support.

About ALEISS Consortium

First conceived in September 2002, the Alaska Law Enforcement Information Sharing System (ALEISS) is a consortium of Alaska law enforcement agencies committed to working together to help fight and solve crime across the State of Alaska. Founding law enforcement agencies include the Alaska Department of Public Safety and police departments in Anchorage, Homer, Kenai, Juneau, Seward and Soldotna. Fairbanks, North Pole, Skagway and Wasilla have since joined the alliance. Today, these agencies contribute data that represents sixty-six percent of public data from existing law enforcement databases across the State with the goal to eventually achieve one hundred percent statewide participation and coverage. Initial funding was provided by a federal grant and the State of Alaska. The program is administered by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center – Northwest - a program of the National Institute of Justice.

For more information: www.aleiss.org