In 2005, the Memphis Police Department (MPD) piloted a program to combat serious and violent street crime using statistical data and a defined methodology. By compiling incident reports and other law enforcement data for the last several years, officials say their technology enables them to forecast criminal “hot spots” more accurately and respond more effectively to the shifting criminal landscape.

The MPD stood up Operation Blue CRUSH (which stands for Crime Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) in conjunction with the University of Memphis’ Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, using predictive analytics by IBM. Since 2006 MPD has seen a 31 percent reduction in serious crime, including a 15.4 drop in violent crime around the city. Much of this drop has been credited to Blue CRUSH and its statistics, or analytics-based approach to law enforcement.

According to department officials, IBM software compiles volumes of crime records, including data from patrols in the field, in mere seconds. With the use of such tools, MPD “now has the invaluable insight all of our staff can use — from the commanders to the patrolling officers — to specifically focus investigative and patrol resources with the goal of preventing crime and making our neighborhoods safer,” Colonel James Harvey, Commander at MPD’s Ridgeway Station, said in a statement.

Over the last year, IBM has announced a healthy portfolio of government clients using business intelligence and analytics products – a business line which has been buoyed by 18 acquisitions and $11 billion in the last four years.

Other police departments using IBM’s SPSS predictive analytics include Richmond PD, but the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice and the police department in Edmonton, Canada have installed similar solutions.

In Memphis, IBM software being used by Blue CRUSH will also incorporate information and data gathered by the police department’s $3 million Real Time Crime Center (RTCC). The RTCC is designed to be a resource-sharing initiative that will facilitate cooperation between city, state, county and federal law enforcement within a 75-mile radius of the city to proactively combat crime.

By using predictive analytics, the project has also garnered an award for improving operations, enabling MPD to reduce crime without a proportional increase in staff while expanding the department’s reach into the community.

According to the report, published by Nucleus Research, the project’s average annual total cost of ownership is $395,249. Meanwhile, the average annual benefit of the system (both direct and indirect) is over $7 million. The report calculated the indirect benefits by estimating the amount of additional officers that would have been needed to reduce crime by 31 percent (the drop since 2006 and the program start).

“IBM’s comprehensive set of capabilities for data access, data preparation, analysis and reporting allow us to get the most value from our analytical resources, empowering every officer on the force to take a proactive role in the city’s ongoing commitment to crime prevention and public safety,” Colonel Harvey added.

ILC Dover has been awarded a new contract from the Department of Defense and will be opening a new manufacturing facility in Dover to support its contract obligation. The new facility is expected to create 70 new jobs by the end of this year.

The state worked with local government agencies to fast-track the permitting process for the new facility in order to keep the DoD from pursuing other ways to fill the need. ILC will work with Lockheed Martin to field a Lighter-than-Air aerostat based radar system that provides real-time feedback to the warfighters on the ground with the goal of reducing IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) events.

The new facility will allow ILC to increase production of the radar system to meet the demand growth outlined in the contract. ILC’s Lighter-than-Air division designs, develops and manufactures aerostats, airships, and advanced development products, and is also responsible for the refurbishment of envelopes, delivery of spares items, and support of field activities.

ILC currently employs approximately 425 people in the State of Delaware and provides spacesuits for NASA, Personal Protection Equipment for military, homeland security and industrial users, and containment systems used in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

“New jobs- and a new facility – this is the kind of progress that we are working hard every day to achieve in our state,” said Governor Jack Markell. “We will continue to focus on improving the conditions that help businesses like ILC grow because the economic benefits produce a positive ripple effect for Delaware, for the region and beyond. Businesses like ILC can count on us to be more efficient, more responsive and more focused on jobs than any other state.”

On Friday, California announced the formation of the state’s Disaster Corps – marking the first such Corps in the US. The Disaster Corps is designed to professionalize, standardize and coordinate all statewide disaster volunteers. Volunteers will now be registered by their local government organization and be required to meet training, certification and security guidelines.

The creation of the Corps comes out of the Cosco Busan Oil Spill and Wildfire response efforts which created a large often disparate crowd of volunteers. In order to streamline the process, the Corps will guide volunteers through a series of guidelines that are designed to find strengths and keep volunteer efforts more organized. In February 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Karen Baker to serve as the state’s and also the nation’s first secretary of Service and Volunteering and charged her office with the development of the Disaster Corps.

The Disaster Corps were created through a collaboration between subject matter experts, public-private partnerships and government representatives. Their first major effort will be coordinated through CaliforniaVolunteers. CaliforniaVolunteers has awarded the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and San Francisco $1.15 million in federal homeland security funding to provide background checks as well as First Aid training for the first 1,000 volunteers. Each county will also get an official volunteer coordinator.

As an additional part of the coordination effort, CaliforniaVolunteers launched the Disaster Volunteer Resource Inventory, an online tool that will coordinate and support volunteer programs statewide. Official Disaster Corps programs and NGOs will be granted free access to the tool. The Inventory will also house individual volunteer’s full case history including contact information, training received, availability and past projects as well as any special skill information.

So far the project has received services and funding from private sector contributors such as Deloitte LLP which provided $750,000 in pro-bono consulting and The Home Depot Foundation which has committed $60,000 for disaster related supplies.

“California is always leading the way and now we are the first state in the nation to integrate volunteers into our state emergency plan,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “Volunteers are an incredible resource, and no state has more giving, more passionate or more dedicated volunteers than California. Together, we will take volunteerism to a whole new level and make California better prepared and better equipped than ever before, for any emergency.”

Digital security is always at the top of the priority list for public sector officials. Rocstor a California-based company is hoping to help governments manage their digital security, encryption and data storage with several product lines launched earlier this year. CivSource spoke with Rocstor Director, Ghadoushi Asher and VP of sales Anthony Rink about Rocstor’s solutions and the security industry.

Asher is the first to tell you that his industry is a tricky one for both providers and customers. “People claim full security on their products but inevitably, there are back doors either known or unknown.” Often, security can seem like an unwinnable arms race – the minute a system is installed or upgraded new threats are already in the wild.

According to Asher, Rocstor has been able to combat this through their rigorous testing process and best-in-class security requirements resulting in “the Gucci of hard drives.” He pointed to the company’s Rocsafe MX, the world’s first Encrypted AES-256 Secure Data Storage hard drive a drive that offers FIPS-L2 and L3 Smartcard Protection.

The MX is designed to offer its users a mobile hard drive with military grade encryption. The MX uses both real-time hardware encryption and smartcard authentication, is OS agnostic and requires no software installation. As part of its design the hard drive has an embedded keypad which allows you to key your PIN directly into the unit, which allows users safety from keyloggers.

Data on the MX is stored in a SATA hard disk drive and is designed to plug in without mounting. Pre-boot authentication also puts the device in compliance with Sarbames Oaxley, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) and Gramm-Leach-Billey (GLB). Asher noted that using the MX allows users to have the hard drive they need without being vulnerable by using unsecured desktop or laptop when out from behind the firewall.

Asher and Rink both noted that the company designed its products to meet the needs of its customers regardless of what kind of system they have. For governments that may be working with several different manufacturers or systems, which can be beneficial because they can start using Rocstor without having to overhaul their current set up. “Our government clients find value in getting the security they need immediately,” Asher said.

A big part of government 2.0 is examining how the public sector can utilize new technology at a faster rate to enhance and streamline services – especially during times of crisis. CiviGuard, a new company, hopes their offering can provide that support to first responders. CivSource spoke with founders Zubin Wadia and Timothy Coleman about the CiviGuard platform and what it can do during crisis situations.

The CiviGuard platform offers a multi-touch interface to first responders and civilian subscribers that allows crisis commanders to direct civilians to safety and manage overall crisis response. The idea for the platform originated out of the founders work at Singularity University, an interdisciplinary university with the goal of positively impacting one billion people in ten years by finding solutions to society’s complex problems.

The founders seem genuinely focused on this challenge, they underlined the amount of research time spent in developing the platform to ensure that it would stand up in critical situations. Wadia demonstrated the multi-touch platform from the subscribers point of view on his iPhone and from the commanders point of view on a large touch screen, “we used a touch based interface because our research showed that in times of crisis users who can rely on touch have a calmer and faster response than those who have to manage a keyboard and mouse.”

Right now, individual subscribers who sign up for the application on their smartphone will get push notifications, email or SMS messages if they are in an area where a crisis occurs. By launching the application, both users and first responders can get near real-time updates about the status of civilians and crisis response. Additionally, should a subscriber find themselves in need of rescue ahead of one of these notifications or during an event they can notify CiviGuard who will direct first responders to the subscriber. Think of it like OnStar for your pocket. The process also takes into account user privacy by making all location and personal data opt-in and removing that data after a user is reported as safe.

On the command side, first responders can use the touch interface to literally draw out the response area, identify exits, and start moving people. As civilians move out and response teams move in, crisis managers can watch those movements in near real-time on their screen and adjust as needed. The notification function allows managers to notify as many as one million people in two minutes, with location polling updating every 60 seconds.

When asked about the platform’s weight on the telecom network, which is typically overworked in times of crisis Wadia said, “our platform has a very small network footprint on purpose, we want to be able to get through. If our subscribers can’t get the data network, we can use SMS and we can also confirm that the message was delivered.” The platform also uses not one but three cloud services – Rackspace, Amazon and NASA’s Nebula, allowing them to bridge between several data support systems to maintain resiliency during crisis.

Currently, the company is working with federal first responders as well as state agencies and several large cities. Last week, at Gov 2.0 Expo they announced a pilot with public sector technology leader Manor, Texas. They have also done demonstrations for New York City and San Francisco and are actively seeking other cities or governments interested in being part of their pilot phase.

CiviGuard is available as an application for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry with additional mobile releases launching later this year.

Cyber security is an issue that defines the age in which we live. Not only do cyber incursions create a significant threat to commerce but they can also disrupt the internet, which has become one of the primary means for communication.

In particular, state and local governments are more affected by cyber security risk than other sectors of the U.S. economy, as this is where the preponderance of direct citizen to e-government transactions take place. Consequently, it is also at this level of government where the greatest threat of obstruction to service continuity exists.

We are now approaching the first anniversary of President Obama’s cyber policy address. It led to increased national debate on this topic, as well as several structural changes at the federal level, which included the designation of the White House Cyber Security Coordinator role currently held by Howard Schmidt.

Additionally, it has also been just a little over a year since the first ever Congressional Cyber Study Commission issued its report. We owe a debt of gratitude to the members of the Commission and their thoughtful leadership of that critical review.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to participate in an extraordinary event: the first ever Worldwide Cyber Security Summit. The Summit was sponsored by the EastWest Institute and held in Dallas, Texas. An extraordinary group of 500 business and corporate leaders from close to 40 countries assembled to discuss issues of policy development, information sharing and collaboration to reduce the cyber threat.

At the Summit, there were breakthrough groups that focused on cyber threats in the following critical industries: telecommunications, finance, media, transportation, energy, national security and essential government services. There were also an impressive group of guest speakers including: Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO of the Data Security Council of India; Udo Helmbrecht, Executive Director of the European Network and Information Security Agency; Liu Zhengrong, Director General of the China Internet Media Research Center and the Deputy Director General of the Internet Affairs Bureau of China’s State Council Information Office; Howard Schmidt; Michael Dell; Jim Quigley, Global CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security and senior advisor to Deloitte LLP; Teri Takai, CIO of the State of California; John Stewart, CTO of Cisco; and Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T.

After attending the Summit, I came away with the following insights as to why state and local governments need to step up their efforts to protect information and avoid service interruptions from cyber intrusions:

• Budget duress and deficits create an imperative to drive more citizen communication and services to the internet for cost reduction purposes.
• As more customer-to-government transactions go on the internet, the consequences of cyber intrusions increase.
• As critical health care, welfare and child protection services go on the internet, the cyber threat may also represent a threat to life.
• It is presently unclear how international rules of military engagement apply to cyber, therefore, better defined policies are required.
• Given the intermingling of military and civilian services on the internet, it is also unclear how services to private citizens are protected even if a policy was established to protect services for vulnerable citizens, in the event of a military conflict.

As this has some fairly significant implications, state and local governments in the U.S. should consider the following questions:

• How does one develop an appropriate policy framework and build multi-lateral alignment?
• Along those lines, what comprises critical government services that should be protected in the event of the conflict?
• What is the nature of the protection that should be afforded?
• What backup capability for critical services should exist in the interest of protecting our citizens?

This is obviously a very provocative set of topics, which are only in the early stages of development. As technology continues to advance and citizen-to-government internet transactions become the primary means of citizen service, it will be important for our elected and appointed leaders to drive alignment on policy and operations to assure that everything possible is being done to prevent cyber intrusions, and that our citizens are protected when such intrusions occur. It is always the safety of our citizens that should be the bottom line — whether in the physical world or the cyber one.

Mr. Robert N. Campbell III is Vice Chairman, Principal, Deloitte LLP and is the U.S. State Government Leader, based in Austin.

Northrop Grumman has established a new office in Grand Forks, North Dakota ahead of the arrival of the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance aircraft at Grand Forks AFB. Northrop already has a facility in New Town, ND where it employs 135 people. The company makes wiring harnesses for the Global Hawk and other unmanned aerial systems.

The new office will be located in Ina Mae Rude Center at the University of North Dakota Center for Innovation and will initially employ 25 people with plans to hire up to 100 more in the future.

With the addition of the Northrop Grumman office, Grand Forks continues to build its aerospace and defense infrastructure – the city is already home of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Center of Excellence which conducts research on UAS technologies. Northrop Grumman and the Ina Mae Rude Center are both partners in the Centers of Excellence program for the state.

“Northrop Grumman is committed to North Dakota, and this office is reflective of the importance of unmanned aerial systems in the state,” said John Schuller, site manager for Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk operation in Grand Forks.

A measure passed by the House of Representatives Tuesday would allocate money to states who have implemented a system for collecting DNA from persons arrested for violent crimes. A provision that would have penalized states who do not meet minimum requirements for DNA collection practices was removed before final passage, after some lawmakers raised concerns.

The Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act would create a 10 percent incentive payment through Justice Department grants for states that implement and use enhanced DNA collection processes. According to the bill, DNA samples of someone arrested or charged with a violent crime needs to be searchable through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and comparable with information from the National DNA Index System to be considered “enhanced.” The bonuses would come from Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grants, also known as the JAG program, and be available through fiscal 2015.

JAG program awards are formula-based grants to state and local law enforcement, totaling $2 billion in 2010. The bonus payments could be worth as much as $10 million to a state like New York. But according to the National District Attorneys Association, only twenty-two states have passed laws permitting DNA collection of arrested individuals, rendering the national database less effective.

In the original language of HR 4614, Byrne grants were to be reduced by 5 percent if state recipients did not have a minimal DNA collection process in place. But following some resistance, the measure was dropped. Lawmakers said that cost was prohibitive to most states that had not yet implemented such programs and that penalizing them would only make matters worse.

As states struggle to close widening budget gaps, law enforcement and public safety is usually at the bottom of a list of cuts. But due to the severity of the economic recession, states have had to look towards Washington to help offset some of their costs. Last summer, DoJ officials spent an additional $1 billion to preserve nearly 5,000 law enforcement positions at state, local and tribal agencies across the country. But many states felt short changed by the hiring program and are scrambling to keep shoes on the beat.

“Decreases in public safety budgets increase grant competition,” said Jeff Webster, a senior analyst at INPUT. Mr. Webster and the market research firm estimate that total funding for justice and public safety and homeland security will be around $5.7 billion in 2010. But as the latest DNA program illustrates, organization and strong applications will be key in getting any additional funds.

Today, BreakingPoint Systems Inc., is launching Storm CTM (Cyber Tomography Machine), a network equipment testing product which simulates full-blown attacks and applications and reports back on the overall security and resiliency of how a system’s infrastructure handled the stress.

BreakingPoint, which was founded by the creators of TippingPoint, has been providing cybersecurity services for the last five years and says the Storm CTM product will provide the only truly credible data about the overall resiliency of a system. CivSource spoke with Scott Register, director of project management and Kyle Flaherty, director of marketing about the product and what resiliency scoring means for cybersecurity.

According to BreakingPoint, Storm CTM essentially takes an x-ray of network and data center devices to find all of the different stress fractures, or problems in the system, and reports back with an overall score that allows the user to determine where vulnerabilities exist before they are exploited. Register and Flaherty note that currently, users primarily rely on the information about equipment or applications provided on the data sheet, but that those numbers are basically marketing numbers established in optimum conditions.

This can mean that when the equipment or application is deployed it acts much more slowly or is more vulnerable because of the real-world data it’s confronted with. They also point out that it’s just not feasible to create a server farm with enough power and space to generate an attack that matches the real thing ahead of a deployment or periodically as part of protecting a system.

According to Register and Flaherty, Storm CTM circumvents the data sheet/server farm scenario and utilizes BreakingPoint’s existing cyber attack and security information to perform stress tests that more closely simulate real-life attacks. The resulting overall score is a combination of performance, stability and security. Users can then take the resiliency data and hold their vendors accountable for vulnerabilities.

“We’re taking the voodoo out of cybersecurity,” Register said.

Current BreakingPoint customers, including enterprises, organizations and governments, were automatically upgraded to the Storm CTM system. Register and Flaherty point out that for their government clients, especially, the potential to hold vendors accountable is significant.

Several states including Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas are currently working on legislation that would require security certifications like resiliency scoring. There is also activity at the federal level including legislation sponsored by Senator Jay Rockerfeller (D-W.V.), as well as activity in the OMB to bring FISMA in line with industry best practices on these issues. The FCC is also looking at resiliency as part of a broader framework guiding their cybersecurity planning.

The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice is implementing predictive analytics to help identify at-risk youth in an attempt to reduce recidivism in state’s penal system.

Using a technology made familiar by Amazon and NetFlix’s personalized recommendations, browsers have become accustom, even demand, to see similar books and movie titles. Through association algorithms or by looking at a user’s click stream – the sequence of pages viewed from browsing to buying – the movie and e-commerce giants hope to predict what the user might buy next.

Traditionally these tools have been adopted by retailers or merchants in order to make more sales. But more recently, predictive analytics is being leveraged by the public sector to provide better services and produce more efficient outcomes. By looking at historical data and using statistical algorithms, state and local governments can transform their seemingly infinite amount of latent data into meaningful, actionable information.

At the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice, and in other segments of the detention system across the country, they are hoping to better understand and treat causes of recidivism, especially in young adults. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) announced Wednesday a partnership with SPSS, an IBM company, to identify high-risk youth and prescribe individualized rehabilitation programs to keep them from re-entering the system as adults.

CivSource spoke to Bill Haffey, predictive analytics strategist for the public sector at SPSS, about how DJJ is leveraging the technology and what kinds of predictors could indicate high and low risk offenders.

“At the Department of Juvenile Justice, their interest has always been the same – to identify offenders who are likely to accelerate, or graduate, into the adult court system,” Mr. Haffey said. Generally, the juvenile justice system in the US has takes a uni-dimensional analysis. “If a juvenile was in the system two or three times,” Mr. Haffey said, “there was a knee-jerk reaction to ‘watch out’ for that person. But there are other pieces of information that haven’t been fully exploited.”

With the new IBM SPSS software, DJJ will move beyond Excel spreadsheets to analyze key predictors such as past offense history, home life environment, gang affiliation and peer associations, predicting which youths have a higher likelihood to reoffend. But Mr. Haffey said it is often hard to look at any one of those factors because individually they mask the larger effects of their combined influence.

To paint a complete picture, and to understand who is more or less likely to reenter the system, Haffey said the technology could be used prescriptively and be built in as an operational process tool. Once you look at the juvenile offenses, and the various factors that might impact those offenses, you can begin to make sense of what is causing them, Haffey said. Over time, trends and patterns can be incorporated during the intake process, and indicators – such as education levels, parental status, working status, and other types of non-crime related information – can be combined.

“[This information] can then predict the level of risk for an individual, and based on that assessment, a program can be designed.”

DJJ officials plan to do exactly this. In a blog posting, Mark Greenwald, chief of research and planning at DJJ, said he hopes to improve existing screening and placement processes with evidence-based interventions. “We can [then] direct youth toward treatment that will address their specific criminogenic needs,” Greenwald wrote. “This gives us the opportunity to place individuals in specific programs, such as combating substance abuse or addressing mental health issues, creating personalized – versus generic – rehabilitation programs.”

This approach is not unique to DJJ, though. Mr Haffey suggested there are a number of county and state parole boards that are also interested in using predictive analytics to assess risk of their parolees. Similar to the DJJ example, parole officers ask parolees specific questions, which are fed into a predictive model to decide how often a parolee should be required to check-in.

More than 85,000 youth enter the juvenile justice system in Florida. Moving forward with predictive analytics, officials said they hope the first time is the last time.