FBI set to roll out regional data exchange network

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) plans to roll out a regional information-sharing network in the Seattle, Washington, area Aug. 1, the second such regional network the bureau has put in place this year.

The Seattle rollout of the Regional Data Exchange, or R-DEx, follows the launch of a similar network in the St. Louis, Missouri, area in February, said R. Scott Crabtree, section chief of the Field Intelligence Section at the FBI’s Directorate of Intelligence. Crabtree detailed the R-DEx project and a sister national project called N-DEx at the fourth annual Government Symposium on Information Sharing and Homeland Security in New Orleans, Louisiana, this week.

R-DEx allows federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to tie their investigative databases together, providing the same information to all law enforcement officers with access to the database, Crabtree said. In the St. Louis area, the FBI, the Illinois State Police, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police, the St. Louis County Police and the St. Clair County ( Illinois) Sheriff’s Department are able to share investigative information with each other, the FBI said.

The R-DEx and N-DEx programs stem from an August 2004 presidential order requiring federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies to better cooperate with state and local police.

R-DEx and N-DEx are built on a version of the XML (extensible markup language) open Web standard, ensuring the ability for multiple organizations to participate, Crabtree said. The systems are built entirely on commercial, off-the-shelf software, he said. An FBI spokeswoman couldn’t immediately provide details on what other software is being used, although Crabtree said the systems allow investigators to retrieve text-based and map-based information.

Using commercial software will allow the FBI to swap out software when a competing product has better features and will allow regional law enforcement groups to copy the FBI’s work for a minimal cost, Crabtree said.

R-DEx will allow law enforcement agents to search across the participating databases to look for investigative information. For example, a federal agent suspecting a future attack on a chemical plant could search across several agency databases to find past suspects who live close to the plant, Crabtree said.

R-DEx includes a Web-based interface, where law officers can log in and search using a “Google-like” interface, Crabtree said.

“We’re going to give you all the tools that allow people to talk to each other,” Crabtree said to the local, state and national law enforcement agents attending the information sharing conference. “We want to put the right information in the right people’s hands.”

The FBI plans to roll out 12 to 18 regional data exchange systems in pilot programs in coming months, Crabtree said. The FBI plans to add several federal agencies’ investigative information to R-DEx, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Prisons.