On Friday, April 22, 2016, OJBC staff participated in a White House-led meeting of law enforcement agencies and organizations supporting the open data efforts outlined in the President’s Police Data Initiative (PDI).  The PDI is among the more visible ways in which the Administration is encouraging the law enforcement community to implement recommendations of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

The event celebrated the one year anniversary of the launch of the PDI, in which over fifty law enforcement agencies have joined in a commitment to make datasets open and available to the public.  The White House also sought, and received, new commitments from the participating agencies and allied organizations that have pledged their support.

The OJBC is one such organization.  We see our primary role to be helping these agencies use low-cost, open source, standards-based technologies to fulfill their commitments.  Our mission is to drive down the cost of justice information sharing–including open data efforts–so that it can scale nationwide and be affordable for any agency in any jurisdiction in the country.

To formalize this role, we are committed to accomplishing the following, with partners willing to join with us in making this happen:

  • We seek a partnership with one or more companies that provide records systems to law enforcement agencies, to collaborate on building interface software for the extraction of data from those systems, and contribute that software to the Open Justice Broker platform for any agency to use and enhance
  • We would like to work with at least two agencies–the more, the better–to implement these interfaces as part of their participation in the PDI
  • We pledge to enhance the existing OJB analytics capabilities to support analyses and visualizations of common law enforcement open data sets

In addition, we will be working with the Police Foundation to recommend ways to improve the consistency of open data across jurisdictions.

We applaud the PDI staff and these pioneering agencies for their leadership on this important issue, and look forward to rolling up our sleeves and making our unique contribution!