Building on the efforts of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the White House has launched a new police data initiative aimed at improving policing and community relations with the police. The data initiative comes out of the recommendations of the task force which site the need for police to better use data and other technologies to build community trust.
According to a blog post from the White House, the initiative will help police departments find ways to accelerate their adoption of data-driven decision making and use of new technologies. President Obama went to Camden, New Jersey today to discuss the initiative and the challenges faced by police departments when it comes to modernization.
The initiative will pull from the best practices of police departments around the US that are already working through their own modernization projects. The White House has also assembled a volunteer team of technology experts to work on the initiative. That team will be in Camden today starting a two day design sprint to help the local police department craft their own technology and data plan.
21 other communities noted in the image above are taking part in the initiative. Those 21 cities will focus on finding ways to use open data to increase transparency, build community trust, and support innovation and will also find technological improvements to service delivery.
All 21 police departments have committed to release a combined total of 101 data sets that have not been released to the public. The police departments will be aided in their release of data through a new system currently being built by the Police Foundation and ESRI. The resulting platform will be a public safety data portal which will act as a as a central clearinghouse option for police open data.
According to the White House, Code for America and CI Technologies are also working together to build an open source software tool to make it easier for the 500+ U.S. law enforcement agencies using IA Pro police integrity software to extract and open up data. Open data company Socrata and the Presidential Innovation Fellows are also working together on making it easier for police departments to release data.
Image source: The White House
