Alfred Vanderpuije, Mayor of Accra, Ghana

By Alfred Vanderpuije

This week at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town, leaders will come together to discuss Africa’s future. One of the three focus themes is the importance of ‘Strategic Infrastructure’ as a foundation for the continent’s growth. As Mayor of Accra and Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, I would say that there are few areas as crucial for infrastructure investment as cities.

Buoyed by an emerging oil and gas industry and a rapidly growing consumer class, Ghana’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. Investors are flocking to the country’s capital Accra to take advantage of new business opportunities and become part of this success story. Mastercard recently identified Accra as one of Africa’s top cities in terms of economic growth potential over the next few years. Local and foreign firms are also driving a number of urban development opportunities such as Ghana Cyber City, King City and Appolonia City which aim to set up modern, high-tech hubs within and around Accra.

I welcome these initiatives, however, at the top of my agenda is Accra itself and the transformation of its existing systems and services for the benefit of its citizens and businesses. The truth is we cannot look to Accra’s future opportunities, without looking into the challenges of today.

Accra’s existing infrastructure is being put under increasing strain by an influx of new residents – the city’s population has expanded by over 1 million people – a 35 percent increase in the past decade alone. As we cannot, and will not, put a wall around the city to restrict the arrival of new residents, we can expect this trend to continue.

We must therefore act today to ensure that the city’s systems – from transportation, to water, sanitation, energy, healthcare, public safety, education and administration – are able to accommodate and cope with this influx of new residents.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For instance, today nearly all transportation in Accra is by road, but 70 percent of the vehicles carry only 30 percent of the people – a trend which causes significant traffic jams during peak hours.

Accra also suffers from perennial flooding problems and in 2011 there was extensive loss of life due to flash floods within the city. These problems highlight the extensive modernization required to our sanitation and storm water systems.

At the heart of many of these problems is our inability to finance projects to maintain and transform Accra. The reality is, my Metropolitan Assembly struggles to raise enough revenue for city services due to out-of-date revenue collection systems, tax evasion and fraud.

The government of Ghana and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly are already taking steps to address these challenges. Recently, Ghana’s President, John Dramani Mahama, launched the National Urban Policy Framework and Action Plan to promote the sustainable development of Ghanaian cities and towns. In Accra, we have put in place the Millennium Cities Initiative to raise the standard of living and we are beginning the transformation of many of the city’s systems. The Accra Sanitary Sewer and Storm Water Drainage Alleviation Project, supported by the U.S. government, also stands to improve waste water treatment for the city’s four million residents.

We recognize we cannot do this work alone. We need to tap into expertise and experience from across public and private sectors and civil society, within Ghana and around the world. We also recognize that the infrastructure we are currently installing has to be designed to withstand the challenges of tomorrow. We must therefore turn to the latest technologies to ensure that our systems are optimized and smarter.

IBM recently offered its expertise to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to help tackle some of the city’s most intractable problems. A team of IBM experts travelled to Accra last year to work alongside our own. Just last week the company presented me with a report which outlines some of the key challenges and possible solutions in areas such as transportation, city services and energy. I also met with Dr. Kamal Bhattacharya, Director of IBM Research-Africa who presented some interesting new solutions specially designed for Africa. 

We see great opportunity for technology in Accra. For example, in the area of revenue collection, we see potential to use mobile payment systems to enable citizens and small businesses to pay for their taxes and city services electronically. Once payment systems are digitized, it will become a lot easier for my administration to identify cases of tax underpayment or fraud.

In the area of transportation, we could also turn to mobile phone data to help us to understand how Accra’s residents move around the city and how we could use that data to enhance our transportation systems to avoid traffic bottlenecks and traffic jams. We have a number of mobile service providers active in Ghana who could act as partners for such work.

In the area of water and sanitation, we could use technology to help monitor and manage our drainage systems and predict possible cases of flooding.

Technology holds great potential in Accra. However, we also recognize that what makes a city safer and smarter are its people. We need to forge a better relationship with our citizens and increase their sense of responsibility for their city. Accra’s residents need to take an interest in caring for the city. Nearly every one of our residents has a mobile phone – this creates the perfect channel for reporting problems and threats to the city’s infrastructure.

Across Africa, cities are growing quickly – economically and demographically. In Accra we need to embrace technologies and show leadership to ensure that our city is not left behind.

Technorati Tags: africa, Big Data, Ghana, IBM Smarter Planet, mobile computing, smarter analytics, Smarter Transportation, WEF 2013

Juerg von Kaenel, Senior Research Manager, IBM Research, Australia

By Juerg von Kaenel

Only with sustained investment in innovation can countries improve the most fundamental quality-of-life indicators for their citizens. For complex and vital disciplines like disaster management, this requires comprehensive collaboration across community, government, industry and academia and on a global scale. By focusing on common social goals – such as reducing and mitigating the impact of natural and man-made disasters – best practices and collective technical knowledge can be used to help improve community resilience and potentially save lives.

The newly-announced teaming of IBM, the University of Melbourne, and the National ICT Australia (NICTA) research centre, to develop and implement the Australia Disaster Management Platform (ADMP) will enable collaboration between innovators in the critical fields of disaster planning, response and recovery. The ADMP promises to remove some of the major historical obstacles to innovation in this increasingly critical field.

Today’s decision support systems typically lack interoperability or common communications standards. So when disaster strikes, each response team or recovery unit ends up acting as an isolated silo, unable to access potentially relevant data held by their counterparts. To improve speed and efficacy, innovators must first overcome these significant inhibitors to change.

The ADMP will use an OpenStack-based cloud platform to provide a “system of systems” approach, which will allow a wide spectrum of information streams to come together into a simulation and optimisation environment. It will provide predictions on outcomes to be brought together and put into the context of the decision-makers for them to garner information and take informed action during an emergency. With the deployment of the ADMP, emergency services personnel will gain access to integrated situational intelligence that applies real-time analytics to all geospatial and temporal information available from the affected area. Doing so will make for faster, evidence-based, decisions.

In the initial stages, a pilot program will use buildings and infrastructural Big Data in selected urbanMelbourneareas to develop proofs-of-concept that are focussed on delivering decision support that facilitates speedy and efficient evacuation during emergency situations.

To develop the ADMP, IBM, the Universityof Melbourneand NICTA have committed to pooling our collective and unparalleled experience in creating and deploying such a platform, bringing to bear Big Data and analytics capabilities within a highly responsive technical solution. For IBM, not only do we bring these capabilities, but we also bring world-leading experience in, among other areas, data optimisation and architectural expertise through our Smarter Cities deployments throughout the world.

By pooling technical and strategic resources, all three organisations aim to not only improve the baseline quality of disaster response and recovery, but also pave the way for future technological and practical innovations in the area. Collaboration between community, government, industry and academia often has its challenges, but it is an essential ingredient to fostering innovations that are successful in delivering what economists call “the common good” to nations as a whole.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, disaster management, disaster recovery, geospatial, IBM Smarter Planet, NICTA, OpenStack, OpenStack Foundation, real-time analytics

Angel Petisco, CIO, Miami-Dade County

By Angel Petisco

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, Big Data analytics, IBM Smarter Planet, Miami-Dade County, Smarter Cities, Smarter Transportation

Mike Reade, IBM Public Safety Business Value Consultant

By Mike Reade
(This post originally appeared in Homeland Security Today.)

Police chiefs and police officers from all over the world recently descended on San Diego for the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference. During the meeting, in displays reminiscent of the character “Q” from all the wonderful James Bond movies, considerable attention was focused on the whiz bang gadgetry and equipment. But hidden among all the gadgets were realistic discussions about how police continue to grapple with the ongoing demand to do more with existing resources to keep our cities and towns safe.

The hidden gem in this discussion: Big Data.

In recent years, data has become a natural resource for businesses in various industries on a global scale. Data can also be used for public safety – from solving a petit larceny to protecting people at large events such as the Super Bowl or Olympics.

Data has proven to be pivotal in stopping criminals who know no borders in the San Diego area, where neighboring cities participate in regional information sharing initiatives. Just north, in Lancaster, Calif., it has helped the city integrate data from the Sheriff’s Department and 911 emergency response systems and to map it geographically and forecast which areas of the city that require the most resources.

Research indicates 90 percent of all data in the world was created in the last two years. Think about how that impacts police departments. They have older information systems and they are being inundated with new information every single day — some from existing siloed systems, but much of it from online and mobile sources.

The proverbial needle in a haystack gets smaller and smaller every day. And it’s not just about the enormity of the volume of data. It’s also about the variety of data sources and the ability to respond to real time information … or velocity of the data. Lastly, there is the veracity of the data. In other words, can it be trusted?

So what can police agencies do to tackle this challenge? Well, it begins with secure information sharing across jurisdictions. ARJIS — the Automated Regional Justice Information System — is doing just that. It’s a sharing arrangement across more than 70 agencies, including those in San Diego and Imperial Counties. These departments tap into a virtual network of tips, case files and other data that is transforming police work and leading to smarter ways of combining technology with the gut instincts of experienced law enforcement officers.

ARJIS integrates more than 6,000 workstations throughout San Diego County and has more than 11,000 authorized users generating more than 35,000 transactions daily. Officers who were once restricted by physical geography are now able to tap into neighboring departments and agencies for information on suspects, ongoing investigations and crime hotspots. Borders on a map are meaningless to criminals. Agencies realize that information sharing is now a requirement in order to succeed.

Similar to ARJIS, Orange County, Calif. leads what is likely the largest information sharing agreement of its kind. The Integrated Law & Justice Agency of Orange County (ILJAOC) spearheads an initiative that connects Orange County, San Diego; Tucson, Ariz.; Las Vegas; Spokane, Wash. and other Western cities. Indeed, ILJAOC extends 3,000 miles to Boston.

Agencies participating in this network securely share about a quarter billion documents that contain billions of data elements – arrest records, mug shots, incident reports, etc.

Sure, it’s a larger haystack, but using analytics capabilities helps make all the right connections, so that when a criminal leaves one jurisdiction and enters another, it’s that much easier for an officer to make an arrest.

Smart local sharing initiatives that span multiple jurisdictions simplify collaboration between departments, eliminate borders, protect police officers and, most importantly, keep the public safe.

IACP’s commitment to its membership is all about ensuring the safety and security of all police officers and the communities they serve. In my mind, the greatest whiz bang innovation is our ability to capture, analyze and act upon the data. 

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, crime, crime fighting, IBM Smarter Planet, Police Department, predicitve analytics, security

Avi Marco, CTO, insurethebox

By Avi Marco

At insurethebox, a telematics-based car insurance company in the U.K., we focus on all aspects of data – integrating internal and external sources. Big Data is at the core of our business mission which is to focus on encouraging safe driving and helping to reduce the cost of car insurance, especially for young drivers.

 By placing a telematics device slightly bigger than a mobile phone under the dashboard and connecting it to a GPS and other sensors, we are able to capture data from these devices and analyze key aspects of driving, including how, where, when and for what duration the car is being driven – and at what speed.

The key to our business model is being able to turn all this data into value for the consumer. Our customers purchase an annual 6,000-mile or 8,000-mile insurance policy that can be topped up if they run out of miles, and customers who drive well at responsible speeds, and who take breaks on long trips, for example, can earn extra miles and apply them to their policies.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To give you some idea of how “big” our Big Data is, think of it in these terms:  in excess of 300 million miles of data increasing at 25 million per month and 80 million trips, with each trip containing latitude, longitude, speed, G-force, type of road, length of trip and GPS quality. We have also managed 111,000 incident/crash alerts with data recorded at 100th of a second around point of impact, and over 30 million quotes in two years.

While these stats may leave you breathless, there’s more to come, as we anticipate data volumes to increase 100-fold in the near term thanks to ongoing advances in telematics.

A new global report on the real-world use of Big Data – based on a survey of 1,144 business and IT professional in 95 countries conducted by IBM and the University of Oxford’s Said Business School – reveals that less than half of the organizations engaged in Big Data efforts are currently analyzing external data, and only 43 percent are looking at social media for deeper understanding about consumer preferences. It’s clear that many businesses today are missing out on opportunities to turn information into insights to aid smarter decision-making and business outcomes.

At insurethebox, our challenge is finding ways to continuously innovate and adapt in order to make the most effective use of our data-driven business model. After all, to paraphrase Darwin, “It is not the biggest that survive, or the most intelligent, it will be those that are the most adaptable.” 

Big Data offers the chance to be smart and adapt – and to do this we must be smart about how we use it.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, driving, health, IBM, smarter analytics, Smarter Insurance, Smarter Planet

Mary Keeling, Manager, Center for Economic Analysis, IBM Institute for Business Value

Water is one of our most essential resources – yet much of the water we use every day is “hidden” as an indirect, yet critical, component of something else – food, health, energy, transportation and more. And of all the water on Earth, only 1 percent of it is useable by ecosystems and humans. In other words, a little bit of water needs to go a long way.

 

As the world’s population increases from today’s 7 billion to an estimated 8 billion in 2025, the demand for water will rise to satisfy increased demand for food, particularly as meat consumption in global diets increase. Every time you consume a kilo of beef you many not realize that it takes 15,500 liters of water to produce it. For comparison, it takes 1,300 liters of water to produce a kilo of wheat.

Now consider the link between water and our health – access to safe drinking water is essential for health and this link is significant – more than 50 percent of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from water-related illnesses. Water is also essential for producing a host of goods and services right across the economy.

When we break it down, each of us on average consumes about 3,800 liters of water a day embodied in the goods and services we produce, as well as the water we directly drink. And, we know that as the world’s population and incomes grow, so too will demand for the water to produce the goods and services needed to satisfy consumption.

Energy, in particular, is heavily reliant on water – it accounts for almost half of the total water used in the U.S. and 44 percent in the European Union.

A less obvious, but important water link wends through our transport networks. Road and rail systems are becoming increasingly vulnerable to flooding from storm surges, rainstorms and rising water tables. In addition, transport infrastructure along coastal regions is at increasing risk from rising sea-levels while at the other end of the spectrum, drought is pushing roads to their design limits and causing severe cracking, as well as restricting navigation channels.

Because of the inter-linkages of many of these water-related systems, problems in one are can quickly spill into other areas, creating widespread problems.

For example, we have more people living in water-stressed areas than ever before, where available supplies cannot meet demand. This issue is expected to intensify as the population in such areas rises by almost 40 percent from 2.8 to 3.9 billion between 2005 and 2030, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

We are also facing more intense and frequent floods around the globe that are resulting in significant human and financial costs. Such flooding impacts water quality as surface contaminants enter water supplies, aquifers and storm water runoffs. As a result, it is estimated that 780 million people currently do not have access to safe water. That figure is expected to rise to 2 billion by 2025.

All of these challenges and problems in the water system are compounded by the looming skills crisis in the water industry as large numbers of older workers retire and the industry struggles to attract and retain younger workers. 

However, amid all these challenges there is some good news. The technology exists to take a more intelligent approach to the way we manage water, using information and analytics to deliver improved outcomes right across the water management lifecycle. Many forward-looking utilities and businesses are already using technology to improve their water management practices – from Dubuque, Iowa, and Sonoma County, California, to Galway Bay inIreland, and many other areas around the world.

We need to encourage more great work and build momentum. The time to act for a collaborative, smarter approach to water management to address the challenges facing the world’s water systems, is now.

Join me for a Twitter chat today at 11:0am ET to discuss the importance of Smarter Water management.  Hashtag: #P4SPchat

Technorati Tags: Analytics, IBM, Smarter Planet, Smarter Water, water management, water safety

Robert Griffin, Vice President, Industry Solutions, IBM Software Group

By Robert Griffin

This week I had the privilege of leading a team of IBMers to engage one of the most important communities we serve as a company — law enforcement.

In San Diego, thousands of police chiefs and public safety leaders from across the globe convened here to attend the 119^th Annual International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference and Law Enforcement Education and Technology Exposition — an event I’ve attended for the last several years while representing private sector ventures, which are now part of IBM.

And in this relatively short period of time, I’ve witnessed the public sector, in partnership with business make great strides to solve Big Data challenges, especially as it relates to information sharing across jurisdictions.

Like other parts of the public sector, police departments continue to face the daily conundrum of having to do more with less - or do more with existing resources - to keep our cities and towns safe. Increasingly, leading-edge cities are looking to software solutions that employ advanced analytics not only to help recognize crime patterns, but even solve crimes. These capabilities help law enforcement deal with some of the age-old goals of crime fighting, like removing criminals from the streets to create safer neighborhoods.  

In my hometown of Tucson, Ariz., for example, a community policing project to restore part of the midtown area in just such a fashion led to a 60 percent reduction in drug-related crime within 18 months. And, it’s important to note that the value of reducing crime doesn’t end with safer streets. Not only do economies perform better when crime goes down – as a recent report from IBM indicates – but police officer safety goes up.   

“Officer safety increases as technology provides enhanced situational awareness for our personnel,” said Tucson Police Chief Roberto A. Villaseñor.

During the conference, law enforcement leaders also discussed how they’ve transformed their public safety operations with effective analytics and data sharing capabilities, such as IBM i2 COPLINK, a database application that consolidates policing data, aids collaboration and helps law enforcement generate leads.  

“The IBM i2 COPLINK system has fundamentally had the most significant impact on law enforcement in the county since we went to a shared/integrated radio system back in the 1970’s,” said Bob McDonell, Executive Director for the Integrated Law & Justice Agency for Orange County, Calif., and Retired Chief of Police for Newport Beach, Calif. “It’s been a game changer.”

Captain Scott Edson, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, echoed the value and the role that technology is playing in law enforcement today. “We’re seeing success with information sharing because knowledge derived from technology makes it easier to solve a case or prevent a crime tomorrow,” Edson said.

With advanced technology as the backdrop, my team and I discussed newer capabilities that will help take smarter policing even further. Packaged as IBM i2 Intelligent Law Enforcement, these solutions take the COPLINK system to the next level by building in Big Data and analytics to enable law enforcement to:

• Manage resources effectively for planned operations and tactical response
• Build policing strategies based on reliable, evidence-based information
• Leverage analytics in all levels of the policing model making the latest knowledge tools available to everyone in the agency
• Deliver organizational efficiencies across departments and partner agencies
• Build data sharing partnerships to overcome organizational and geographical boundaries

I am always humbled by the brave contributions of law enforcement to our society, and always proud to support the important mission of IACP that helps ensure the safety of officers and the communities they protect and serve all over the world.  I can’t think of a more important mission to support. 

Follow Robert Griffin @BobGriffin_PS.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, crime, crime fighting, law enforcement, Police Department, predicitve analytics

By Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier

Just over 20 years ago, Washington, D.C., was known as the “Murder Capital” of the United States. I was a fairly new officer when we were given this title and believe me, it was not something I was proud of and I committed myself to ensuring I did what I could to change that. Fast forward to a year ago and I can’t tell you how proud I was to announce that our homicide rate has dropped to a 50-year low.

That’s no small feat for a metropolitan area like Washington, D.C. I’ll admit we still have a long way to go, but I’m please to say that we’ve continued to put a dent in our homicide rate. Based on the hard work of our officers and the community, we’ve been able to reduce homicides by 22 percent since this time last year and nearly 75 percent since 1992. Additionally, we have been able to increase our homicide closure rate from 22 percent to nearly 95 percent during the same time period.

It’s successes like this that have changed the face of our nation’s capitol. Once seen as one of the unsafest cities in country, we are now a hub for economic prosperity. Just take a look at some of our more recent accolades:

• U.S. News and World Report ranked residents of the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area as having one of the highest real incomes in the United States.
• The Atlantic ranked the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area as being the top spot for recent college graduates to find a job.
• Gallup ranked Washington, D.C., number one in having the highest well-being among the 52 largest metropolitan areas, those with 1 million or more residents.

I could go on and on about our city’s recent accomplishments, but I believe that our successes in reducing crime has been a key factor in making Washington, D.C., a more economically viable and prosperous city for our residents and companies that call the metropolitan area home.

As I said before, there’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re heading down the right road and I believe that there are much greater things to come for our city.

Technorati Tags: Chief, IBM, police, Police Department, public safety, Smarter Public Safety, Washington DC

by Christopher Padilla, Vice President of Government Programs for IBM

If you live in or around Washington, D.C., you have seen first hand how better public safety can help to improve local economies. Once known as the “Murder Capital” of the U.S., the homicide rate has dropped to a 50-year low in our capital city. This kind of dramatic turnaround has helped the city become a focal point for economic growth.  I’d urge you to read Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier’s latest post to the Smarter Planet blog to learn more about what D.C., is doing to curb crime and foster economic growth.

Today, IBM’s Institute of Business Value released a paper on how a smarter approach to managing public safety can jumpstart economic development. This paper outlines how cities can curb crime and foster economic growth.

Every day, local governments are challenged with ensuring they create a safe environment to not only protect the safety of their citizens, but also promote economic growth.

Here are just a few examples of how crime can have an impact on the Gross Domestic Product of certain countries:

• The annual cost of youth involvement in organized crime in the United States is approximately $465 billion or 3% of GDP
• In the United Kingdom, the annual cost of crime per household is £3,000
• The direct of crime in Brazil is 3-5% of its GDP
• Total crime costs in after including other medical, institutional, private security, economic costs and transfers in South Africa is 7.8% of its GDP

At IBM, we believe public safety has a strong affect on quality of life and migration decisions, especially of highly skilled individuals. In addition, crime can erode human capital through injury and death of workers. To that end, we have identified five key competencies that will help to reduce crime and, in turn, increase a city’s economic viability:

1. Start on the journey to developing smarter public safety management system for your organization by knowing what data you already have and improving access to it.
2. Once you have improved access to data, focus on co-coordinating and integrating information in your organization.
3. Then focus your efforts on enhancing situational awareness by putting usable information into the hands of responders
4. Enable proactive planning and intelligence based decision making by use analytics to make better use of available information
5. Collaborate across borders and share information to created a unified threat assessment and response capability

In short, better public safety makes locations more attractive for individuals to visit, positively impacting tourism revenue and activity. A smarter public safety system means a healthier economic outlook.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, collaboration, IBM, public safety, Smarter Public Safety, Washington DC

By Chief Frank Milstead, Mesa Police Department

Combating crime in a city like Mesa, Ariz., is never easy, but my officers here have done an amazing job of reducing crime to historic lows that haven’t been seen in 50 years. We have been able to dramatically reduce crime by 25 percent since 1991.

We’ve had a number of recent successes in reducing crime, but one incident in particular sticks in my head. Mesa PD is host of the East Valley Gang and Criminal Information Fusion Center.  The center is a combined effort between seven local law enforcement agencies to share information and we have already seen the value of sharing information.  Earlier this year, a detective in the East Valley Gang and Criminal Information Fusion Center was monitoring the patrol radio and heard a partial license plate and a vehicle description referencing a hit and run collision broadcasted over the air.  We were able to identify that four possible vehicles fit this description in near real time. This information, along with other identifying characteristics of the owner of the car allowed the detective to identify the suspect, pass the information to officers on the scene.  The officers in the field were able to quickly locate the suspect.

Through its work with IBM, the Mesa Police Department joins an elite group that includes New York, Vancouver, Northern Ireland, Memphis and many others that are using advanced analytics to protect the safety of Mesa's residents and visitors. Police Officer Todd Reed of the Mesa Police Department reviews information on a suspect in his patrol car.

While we may not always enjoy such historic low crime numbers, I am proud of the crime fighting efforts our officers have exerted in getting us here.  We will continue these efforts with vigor and continue to evaluate our processes so our citizens and visitors may continue to enjoy a safe living and working environment.  Part of this evaluation process will include a look towards technology assisted policing.  We are now embracing a Smarter Policing approach that allows us to coordinate traditional police work with more strategic use of our resources like analytics technology to gain a more holistic view of our city. Smarter Policing brings together the art and science of law enforcement that augments the experience and knowledge of our officers with the information they need to make appropriate decisions.

Smarter Policing couldn’t come at a more important time for our city. Check that, it couldn’t come at a more important time for our region because crime knows no borders. Criminals don’t care where a city’s borders begin and end. They only care about not getting caught. This has created huge challenges for me and my colleagues in neighboring cities. We were confined to our borders and really didn’t have insight into what happened a couple miles away because it wasn’t in our jurisdiction. But that is changing along with the technology to keep pace with a faster-paced, more complex world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sharing information with other states helps fill in the gaps that help our investigators.  For example, other states have lacked pictures of subjects and through accessing our systems have found photos to confirm the subjects identification.  In addition, we have been able to enhance our investigations by adding relationships to others as well as linking together phone numbers, addresses and vehicle information from other states.  In addition, a large benefit has been that our investigators have established strong ties with others in our border states.  Working together across state lines definitely supports reducing crime.

In addition, we just launched a very successful proof of concept that links our information with the NCIS Law Enforcement Information Exchange (LInX) initiative.  This will allow us to be connected with 39 other agencies in the greater New Mexico area. The project is meant to foster the sharing of information between local, state, and federal law enforcement. It also provides participating law enforcement agencies with secure access to regional crime and incident data that enable investigators to search across jurisdictional boundaries to help solve crimes and resolve suspicious events.

These are just the first of many steps we need to take to really combat crime. We need to truly render geographic borders irrelevant when it comes to fighting crime. We need to be able to share and have access to the right information regardless of where it resides. We need to do all we can to not only protect the safety of the residents of Mesa and our neighboring cities, but also protect those across state borders. Only then will we be truly doing our Smartest Policing.

About Chief Milstead:
Chief Frank Milstead was selected to lead the Mesa Police Department on March 22, 2010 after 25 years of service to the Phoenix Police Department. He leads a department of more than 1200 men and woman, sworn and civilian, dedicated to providing exceptional police service to the third largest city in Arizona. He has pledged to leverage the talents and resources of the Mesa Police Department and its partners to make Mesa a safer city. In December 2011 Forbes Magazine named Mesa, Arizona the 7th safest Major city in the United States.

During his tenure with the Phoenix Police department Chief Milstead demonstrated highly successful leadership and management skill, serving in several high-profile positions that included command positions in the Homeland Defense Bureau, Major Offender Bureau and the Traffic Bureau. Chief Milstead was also involved in several multi-agency high-status cases, served in the Unified Command structure for Super Bowl 42 and the 2009 NBA All Star games, and maintains All Hazard Incident Commander status.

Technorati Tags: crime, criminals, IBM, police