Department: Universal Services
Department Head: Major General Rick Noriega, Executive Director
Regular or Supplemental RCA: Regular RCA
Type of Request: Investment Memo
Investment Memo Type: Final Investment Memo
Project Name: LENS Regionalization Data Sharing
Project ID (if applicable): TBD
Vendor Legal Name (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Contracted Goal (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Current Achievement (if applicable): N/A
Justification for 0% MWDBE Participation Goal: N/A - Goal not applicable to request
Managing Entity: Universal Services
Incremental Authorization Requested: 4,750,900
Total Estimated Project Cost: 4,750,900
Request Summary:
title
Request for approval of a Final Investment Memo for Law Enforcement Network Search (LENS) Regionalization data sharing project for an initial authorization amount of $4,750,900 and request for approval of initial commercial paper funding in the amount of $1,225,000.
end
Project Description:
Sharing criminal data with external law enforcement (LE) agencies provides greater safety and quality of life for residents of Harris County and its surrounding areas. Implementing Law Enforcement Network Search (LENS) will enable partner LE agencies in the Harris County area to search shared data from multiple systems through a single common web application. This will permit LE agencies to make connections and generate leads at a more rapid and efficient rate leading to improved identification, apprehension, and prevention.
Project Scope:
This part of the project will build all the necessary infrastructure for LENS on the Harris County side and implement integrations with some LE agencies. The initial $2.2 million in this phase will set up LENS sharing with LE agencies in three medium-size cities in the Harris County area. Pearland is one of the LE agencies and has an MOU in place. The other two LE agencies have planning in place to participate. The remainder of the funding will be used to enhance data sharing with these agencies and set up sharing with additional LE agencies. US expects per-agency implementation costs to scale after implementing the first three agencies.
This part of the project includes:
• Implement production regionalization environment for LENS by onboarding contract resources, develop and deploy production environment. This will include deploying the production environment with an accessible front end and connecting it to the back end environment through their DMZ, Elastic cluster and their data.
• Implement the production LENS for law enforcement agencies and provide access to HC Data utilizing the contract development team and Elasticsearch on their own infrastructure
• Enable data sharing without storing other agencies data. Implement Data Sharing via LENS for LE Agencies.
• Provide HC LE the ability to search external LE Agencies data.
• Enable users to search through a common user interface against multiple data sources without logging into multiple systems
• Capture customer feedback to measure success and improve performance
• Collate user search results from HC and external LE Agency
• Enable federated access (single ID across multiple environments) for external LE Agency to manage
Justification:
Traditionally sharing criminal history data between law enforcement agencies has been problematic due to Federal Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements of accountability for storing another agency's data.
HC LENS provides a platform and architecture that enables real-time data sharing without the need to store another law enforcement agency's data.
The initial regionalization pilot of LENS with a medium-sized city in the Harris County area has been very successful over the past year and a half. It has aided in the identification and apprehension of many suspects. Some real world examples are below.
• Detectives were able to tie a suspect/vehicle from a series of storage building burglaries to other similar burglaries in Harris County. They could specifically link the suspect and his vehicle from a traffic stop in HCSO jurisdiction to the burglaries in an adjacent area.
• Detectives from a neighboring law enforcement agency not part of Harris County were able to use the suspect vehicle description and historical criminal pattern in one area and tie it to a known HCSO suspect. Subsequently, they found out the suspect had a mandated ankle monitor and applied to obtain that data.
• The approximate location for a Felony family violence suspect could be located in a report found through LENS and this aided in the apprehension of that suspect.
Alternatives and Engagement:
There are vendor platforms, but these solutions do not contain all the data that is specific to Harris County and surrounding communities. They also include user fees per user. These solutions would require Harris County to provide them with our data which would be monetized and provided to for other uses. Also, since these platforms lack all Harris County data, there is no value for surrounding agencies to join which limits additional data availability.
Anticipated Project Expenditures and Timeline:
|
Scope of Work |
Estimated Cost |
Estimated Completion |
|
Implement production regionalized environment for LENS - onboarding contract resources and deploying production environment |
$140,000 |
September 2022 |
|
Implement Production LENS for the first LE agency and provide access to HC Data utilizing the contract application development team. |
$191,000 |
November 2022 |
|
Implement Data Sharing via LENS for the first LE Agency. Provide HC LE the ability to search this LE Agency’s data. Utilize contract development team, professional services and set up hardware. |
$781,500 |
August 2023 |
|
Implement LENS for second and third LE agencies. Utilize contract development team and set up hardware. |
$1,127,500 |
September 2024 |
|
Implementation MFA, expand available data, support additional LE agencies and support. Utilize contract development team and set up hardware. |
$2,079,000 |
September 2027 |
|
Contingency 10% |
$431,900 |
|
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Total |
$4,750,900 |
|
Alignment with Goal(s):
X Justice and Safety
_ Economic Opportunity
_ Housing
_ Public Health
_ Transportation
_ Flooding
_ Environment
_ Governance and Customer Service
Previous Court Action:
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Date |
Agenda Item # |
Action Taken |
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Address: Multiple - Beyond just Harris County
Precinct(s): Countywide
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Fiscal and Personnel Summary |
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Service Name |
Application Development & Support |
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SFY 22 |
FY 23 |
Next 3 FYs |
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Incremental Expenditures (do NOT write values in thousands or millions) |
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Labor Expenditures |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Non-Labor Expenditures |
$1,225,000 |
$ |
$ |
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Total Incremental Expenditures |
$1,225,000 |
$ |
$ |
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Funding Sources (do NOT write values in thousands or millions) |
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Existing Budget |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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$ |
$ |
$ |
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$ |
$ |
$ |
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Total Current Budget |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Additional Budget Requested |
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Commercial Paper |
$1,225,000 |
$ |
$ |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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$ |
$ |
$ |
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Total Additional Budget Requested |
$1,225,000 |
$ |
$ |
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Total Funding Sources |
$1,225,000 |
$ |
$ |
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Personnel (Fill out section only if requesting new PCNs) |
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Current Position Count for Service |
0- |
0- |
0- |
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Additional Positions Requested |
0- |
0- |
0- |
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Total Personnel |
0- |
0- |
0- |
Anticipated Court Date: 8/2/2022
Anticipated Implementation Date (if different from Court date):
Department Approval by: Court Wellington, Senior Manager, Application Development Services, 7/8/2022
OMB CIP Team Approval by: William McGuinness, Director-Capital Projects and Infrastructure, 7/20/2022
Commercial Paper Request (For OMB use only):
Receiving Department: Universal Services
Project PeopleSoft ID: TBD
CP Series Description: Commercial Paper A-1 is used to (1) pay contractual obligations incurred or to be incurred for the construction of and the purchase of fixtures, equipment and machinery for or in connection with the County's criminal and civil justice centers, the County's firefighter training facility, (2) pay contractual obligations incurred or to be incurred for the purchase of automobiles and other vehicles, equipment and machinery, including computers, materials and supplies for the operations of the County precincts and departments and other authorized needs and purposes including services provided by engineers, architects, attorneys, auditors, financial advisors.
Commercial Paper is being requested for the Law Enforcement Network Search (LENS) Regionalization data sharing project and is expected to be repaid within the next three fiscal years either through bonds, budgetary means or pay-as-you-go sources.
HB 1869 compliance confirmed by: Michael James, Assistant County Attorney, 7/20/2022
OMB Financial Management contact: Amy Perez, Deputy Executive Director, Office of Management and Budget