By Joe Mandala, CIO, Kansas Bureau of Investigation

Recently, Kansas underwent an effort to modernize, standardize and integrate its Criminal Justice Information System. The following article shares the success of the effort and highlights the lessons learned. Through its work, the Kansas Criminal Justice Information System (KCJIS) is on its way to being a model implementation for national standards and full integration of justice information.

The Players

KCJIS is built, maintained, and administered by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI).  Policy compliance, auditing, and training for the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are performed by the Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP). Oversight and governance are provided by the KCJIS Committee, a statutory body composed of primary stakeholders in the justice community in Kansas.  Committee members represent the following:

• Kansas Secretary of Administration
• Director of the KBI
• Superintendent of the KHP
• Kansas Sheriff’s Association
• Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police
• Secretary of Corrections
• Office of Judicial Administration
• Kansas County and District Attorneys Association
• Kansas Association of District Court Clerks and Administrators
• Kansas Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO)

Additionally, the KBI works closely with local sheriff’s offices, police departments, other state agencies, and national interests such as NCIC and the International Justice and Public Safety Network (NLETS) on a regular basis.  KCJIS provides access to nearly 500 local, state, and federal agencies directly (representing approximately 10,000 active users), and also to other state partners and their users as appropriate.

This multijurisdictional representation provides the KBI with strong guidance for the development of the system.  Because each of the representatives provides a unique perspective, and knowledge of what information can be shared, there is a strong understanding of the needs and possibilities for sharing justice information within the state.  It is this broad array of needs and sources of information against which the KCJIS Committee and the KBI developed a long-term technical plan for building a more integrated justice system.

The Field

KCJIS provides a variety of core services to its stakeholders.  Many of the services are operationally critical and. unlike most state models, are with one exception, provided free of charge.  The exception is the cost of a physical security token to provide multifactor authentication to the system.  These core services include:

• A secure private network, including multifactor authentication;
• The State Message Switch (NCIC and NLETS access);
• A secure web portal;
• Computerized criminal history file;
• Offender registration;
• Be On the Look-Out (BOLO) file;
• State warrant file;
• Incident-Based Reporting (IBR);
• License Plate Reader (LPR) files;
• Access to driver and vehicle information;
• Access to crash information;  and
• Access to corrections information.

Since KCJIS is not funded directly by the state, this presents a singular challenge for the system, as new projects must be funded using grants.  Since there is no substantial cost to the partners using KCJIS, and there is no direct general funding, the responsibility for updating, managing, and maintaining it falls primarily to the KBI, and to the KHP as the state CJIS Systems Agency (CSA).

An additional challenge is that so many of the systems in the state are not centralized and reside in various independent agencies and organizations. The disparate systems are made up of a wide range of aging technologies and solutions, and little thought was given to the overall goal of sharing the information they contain outside of the owning agencies’ primary missions.

The technology infrastructure in Kansas also poses a challenge.  The state does not provide a method, other than a physical network, for agencies to share information.  For example, there is no state-level enterprise service bus (ESB) or other transactional exchange system.  Instead, agencies have constructed purpose-built interfaces from system to system, each having its specifications dictated by the immediate needs at the time of implementation.  There was no standard in the state for data structure or the exchange of data. Given this general environment the KBI resolved to develop a plan to enable effective justice information sharing in the state.

The Game

The resulting strategic plan involved several elements central to the sharing of justice information. Specific areas of consideration included: security and access, infrastructure and integration, and service.

Execution of the strategic plan was problematic.  With no secure funding source dedicated to the effort overall, there was little hope that KCJIS or the KBI would be able to achieve its overall goal.  Instead, the plan evolved to identify specific objectives and actions that could be taken to support the strategic plan, and to seize opportunities in the planning and execution of individual specific projects.

A critical factor in the overall strategic plan was the development of standards.  Kansas decided to use standards work that had already been done in a number of domains.  The products of the Global Justice Sharing Initiative (Global) and others provided a strong framework to begin.  Security would be based on Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management (GFIPM) standards.  Infrastructure and Integration would use the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), Collaboration between AAMVA and NLETS for Driver License Exchange (CANDLE), the Logical Entity eXchange Specification (LEXS), and the principals of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).  Services and delivery would recognize industry best practices, including Global Reference Architecture (GRA) and the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

The first effort was Kansas’ principal involvement in the CONNECT project.  Initially a proof-of-concept for GFIPM implementation, this project provided the opportunity to build a working model for implementing GFIPM-based identity and access management using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).  CONNECT also developed a strong policy framework based around privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights. 

Kansas also developed a specific long-term strategic plan to update its security architecture which is currently underway.  Going forward, new systems, interfaces, and services, will employ these standards.  The goal is to create a secure system which provides flexibility and ease of integrating users, and will allow the broadening of the user base beyond the traditional criminal justice community to those who have an appropriate interest in justice information but have not had access in the past.

Next Kansas used the electronic citation (eCitation) project to develop and implement the Master Entity Index (MEI).  This will provide a new central index based on LEXS standards which would be used by all new interfaces and, over time would integrate many various data sources into a single searchable system.  The MEI is a system where each data source can load basic searchable information about its records.  Applications can use the MEI to perform searches, retrieve unique identifiers, and query the source system directly using only those unique identifiers.  This increases the efficiency and accuracy of searches, and allows for a segregation of candidate records and detail records.  In turn, this segregation allows a more granular approach to dissemination of information.  The eCitation project also saw the introduction of an ESB into the architecture of KCJIS.  The ESB provides an effective means of integrating varied data interfaces through a single point, and translating between them.  It is a central component of SOA.

The MEI was quickly used in a subsequent project.  The Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR) was in the process of updating its systems containing driver and vehicle records.  This provided an opportunity for moving the existing legacy interface to a more full data-centric model.  The interfaces took advantage of the NIEM specification, and extensions of the schema were developed.  Index information for the records in the KDOR systems was integrated into the MEI.  The vehicle interface was quickly included in the Kansas Central Message Switch (CMS), providing full NIEM-conformant XML responses to in- and out-of-state queries.  The driver interface will be integrated as soon as KDOR is able to bring that updated system into production.

As part a separate project to upgrade the CMS, Kansas developed two additional standards-based interfaces.  One was the NLETS Interstate Sharing of Photos (NISP), based on the CANDLE specification, which allows Kansas to provide driver license and corrections images in a standardized format.  The other was participation in the NLETS effort to standardize rap sheet formats – the Criminal History Information Exchange Format (CHIEF), a NIEM-conformant standard.

The KBI then developed a new offender registration system, using the Sex Offender Registry Tool (SORT), provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.  It uses a NIEM-conformant interface and is integrated into the MEI.  This new system also provides information to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) Exchange Portal.

Following the successful implementation of the new CMS, the KBI began a new project with the Kansas DUI Commission.  This project includes electronic disposition reporting and a new KCJIS Portal.  The electronic disposition interface was built to NIEM specifications.  It also includes a method for users to request scanned court documents (such as journal entries) and for the courts to respond to those requests.  The new functionality provided by electronic dispositions and imaged document transfer also required a rebuild of the KCJIS Portal.  An integral part of this rebuild is a search capability which takes advantage of the MEI and its LEXS-based entity capabilities.  The KBI used this project to integrate several existing data sources into the MEI, to empower the new Master Search system.  The following data sources have currently been integrated or are in the process of being integrated:

• Computerized Criminal History (CCH);
• Kansas Incident-Based Reporting System (KIBRS);
• Kansas Department of Transportation’s CRASH database;
• Kansas Offender Registration Tool database (KsORT);
• Be On the Lookout (BOLO);
• Kansas Misdemeanor Warrants;
• Kansas Department of Corrections data;
• Department of Revenue driver and vehicle data; and 
• Electronic citations.

With a single search, users are able to access records which exist in all of the systems for which integration has been completed.  Users can save their search criteria and store it, allowing subsequent searches over time against specific records that exists in the MEI.  The new portal receives GFIPM-compliant assertions to provide authorizations for users, and is the first internal application fully integrated into that model.

The Score

A lot of progress has been made in the last four or five years in Kansas.  However, there are many opportunities which remain.

One of the most significant areas is the full implementation of an identity federation based on GFIPM.  While parts are in place, there is much yet to be done.  While the new KCJIS Portal accepts SAML assertions for authorization, there are many other applications and systems administered by the KBI which either need to be modified, or will have to age out and be replaced with systems that uses the new standard.

Another major effort underway is the modernization of the Kansas Incident-Based Reporting System (KIBRS) which will provide an opportunity to incorporate data analysis tools critical to the efficient use of the information in KIBRS.  These tools would then also be available across all of our data sources via the MEI.

Geospatial data is another significant gap.  Part of the plan is to integrate geospatial data into the MEI for each data source containing address or location information.  This will strengthen data analysis, and provide another service which can be used by many of our stakeholders.

The plan also incorporates the concept of Master Data Management (MDM).  While the MEI provides a great resource for allowing effective searches across data sources, the capability to definitively match records across data sources is immensely powerful. 

With limited resources and little funding, the KBI on behalf of KCJIS has accomplished a lot in the last few years.  We have built the foundation of an extremely effective and flexible justice information sharing system, and even put up a few structures using that foundation.  There is much yet to be done, but KCJIS is already an example of how using national standards can provide great value to state and local stakeholders.  The future for justice information sharing in Kansas is no longer just in the playbook - it’s being realized on the field.