A cultural shift: Interoperability and digital resilience in police tech

• Some tech companies attempt to monopolize agencies’ tech stacks instead of collaborating with other vendors to provide a seamless data experience.

• Non-interoperable data practices raise questions around data ownership and create blockers for interagency collaboration.

• Choosing interoperable vendors is key to building a resilient, future-proof tech stack.

• Vendors can better support law enforcement by leveraging interoperability and openness as selling points.

Data sovereignty matters. In law enforcement, interoperability and data ownership impact cross-agency collaboration, AI implementation, operational efficiency, and preparation for the future of tech.

Leaders from law enforcement agencies across the U.S. gathered at the recent International Association of Chiefs of Police Technology Conference to discuss how to advocate for their agencies, demand more transparency from their vendors, and shift their industry’s culture around data sharing and tech procurement. Moderated by retired Denton Police Department Chief Doug Shoemaker, the panel of leaders included:

• Chief Information Officer Kent Augustine, New Mexico Department of Public Safety

• Captain Larry Kraus, Pasco Sheriff’s Office

• Deputy Chief John McMahon, Los Angeles Police Department

Augustine, Kraus, and McMahon dove into the challenges of data management in policing, methods for future-proofing an agency’s data stack, and best practices for tech vendors in law enforcement.

Data management challenges in law enforcement

When disparate data systems fail to communicate with each other, agencies experience information silos and data fragmentation. Many police tech vendors claim to solve this issue by providing a “single pane of glass” for all agency data.

However, instead of integrating data from their customers’ existing technology platforms, some providers aim to take over agencies’ tech stacks entirely. This non-interoperable approach to data leads to operational slowdowns and questions around data ownership.

Vendors ‘attempting to monopolize the business’

Augustine put it simply: “Everybody keeps talking about the ‘single pane of glass,’ but everybody wants to own the glass.”

When a vendor attempts to become the end-all be-all for law enforcement data by “monopolizing individual clients’ technology stacks,” McMahon said, public safety agencies and their communities end up suffering the consequences.

“It’s not going to work from a community safety standpoint if we have isolation and a lack of interoperability when it comes to making these procurement decisions,” he said.

He added that it’s unrealistic to expect all police agencies to use the same tech vendors.

“Everybody’s got different technology stacks and relationships with vendors for a variety of different reasons,” McMahon said. “We’re not ever going to have the same technology stacks.”

Instead of relying on “data coercion” and monopolization to snuff out the competition, Augustine said, vendors should focus on creating the best products they can.

“You should not be afraid of your competitors,” he said. “You should beat your competitors by putting out a better product. And you should understand that you’re not going to have a solution that has all of the features. I want to be able to use the same data in multiple places, and have different solutions with different benefits that work off of the same data.”

Unclear definitions of data ownership

To do their jobs safely and effectively, law enforcement agencies need full ownership of and access to their data. However, when vendors hold their customers’ data hostage, the boundaries of ownership can get blurry.

“Just because a vendor has your data does not mean they own access to your data,” Augustine said. “If an agency is collecting data — whether it’s in their RMS and CAD systems, whether it’s ALPR data, or whatever kind of systems they have — they still have the original ownership of the data.”

Questions around data ownership create issues for agencies that want to move their historical data from one solution to another or integrate it into a third-party platform. Some vendors even end up using their customers’ data for business purposes, including research and the development of new AI models.

Technology partners like Peregrine do not misuse customers’ data to further their business interests. We respect customers’ data ownership and their right to decide how their data is used.

Cross-agency data sharing

Collaborating across departments and jurisdictions relies on interagency data sharing and interoperability. However, many law enforcement tech providers — particularly in the automated license plate recognition (ALPR) space — are slowing down interagency collaboration by locking in customers’ data. In some cases, agencies are unable to share data with each other despite using the same platforms, all because their data is set up differently.

“We’ve got agencies throughout New Mexico that are on a variety of different ALPR solutions, and being able to see reads from agencies that are on a different solution from you becomes very difficult,” Augustine said. “It’s been a challenge for us.”

He gave an example: John Doe gets pulled over. He has a diverse record: He was the passenger in a traffic stop in one jurisdiction, the victim of a crime in another jurisdiction, and the suspect of a crime in yet another jurisdiction. However, this data on John Doe is spread across different agencies’ siloed systems.

“When an officer is responding to and dealing with this person, or an investigator or a detective is trying to research a crime, they’re only seeing the data that belongs to their agency, the data in their RMS and CAD systems,” Augustine said. “They’re not seeing the data that’s in someone else’s system, even if it’s the agency right next door.”

Asking for more from police tech vendors

Though law enforcement agencies should own access to their data, Augustine said, they often fall short of demanding a better data experience from their vendors.

Instead of attempting to retain customers through data lock-in, vendors should build customer loyalty by offering the best product possible, he said — and agencies should use their power of ownership to push for better data practices from their tech providers.

“We as agencies often don’t exercise that data ownership,” Augustine said. “Those of us working for agencies, no matter what kind of agency it is, have to stand up and demand certain things of these vendors. We have to say what we expect and put it into our agreements, and be very clear. If you’re afraid of your competitors, then we have problems.”

Interoperability and digital resilience

Interoperability is key to future-proofing any data ecosystem. Interoperable tech providers allow customers to move their data, in bulk, from legacy systems to any third-party solutions — without added fees.

Future access to historical data

As digital offerings evolve and public safety agencies inevitably change providers and onboard new technologies, they will require access to historical data in their new solutions. The only way to ensure continuous access to legacy data in this rapidly changing digital age is by choosing interoperable vendors. Other providers may restrict customers from moving historical data to new platforms or only allow them to move the data in certain formats that are incompatible with other providers or newer technologies.

“If there is that divorce, and you ask for that data back, what will you get back?” McMahon said. “A bunch of gobbledygook in a format that the vendor owns, and they put it on a CD-ROM, and your organization doesn’t have computers that work with CD-ROMs anymore, so you can’t do anything with it.”

Preparing for AI and the unknown

AI makes the future of police technology even harder to predict, further highlighting the importance of flexibility and interoperability for long-term digital resilience. Future-proofing data solutions across the whole law enforcement industry will require a cultural shift, McMahon said.

“We are just in the infancy of the capabilities of what a lot of these folks are going to be able to do for law enforcement and public safety, and we can’t be going back to the trough every time asking for additional sharing agreements,” he said. “It’s very important that we drive a culture as an industry to make sure we do interoperate and share with one another, because it’s changing daily. We need to be a collective voice.”

How tech vendors can better support law enforcement

To make informed, timely decisions for community safety, agencies need full, unencumbered ownership of and access to their data. Police technology providers should share in that mission, which may at times mean putting their business interests second to the interests of public safety.

Cooperate with other vendors

“Our vision is to provide public safety and protect our officers, our people who are out there responding to calls for service,” said Kraus. “You have to be part of that vision. If you’re not part of that vision, go find someone else.”

When vendors fail to “play well in the sandbox” with each other, Kraus said, they aren’t a part of the public safety vision — they’re in the way of it. And in the long run, non-interoperable data practices will result in vendors losing agencies’ business.

“If we’re going to spend more time, more effort, more money trying to get you to come into our current data stack, we’ll go somewhere else,” Kraus said. “Sooner or later, there’s going to be a vendor out there who listens to what we want, goes out and builds it, and plays nicely in the ecosystem. So what we tell our vendors is, if you can’t play nice in the beginning, we’re not going to go with you.”

Sell a better data experience

Competition should motivate technology providers to develop the best solutions on the market, not lock in their customers.

“The way a software vendor should win is by providing better features to attract customers, not by using coercion with the data and holding the data hostage to keep their customers,” Augustine said.

McMahon agreed, saying, “Don’t lock us out from the data we already own.”

“Don’t sell us access to our data and how we want to use our data,” he said. “Sell us the best user experience, the best user interface.”

When vendors compete to develop the best solutions for public safety, everyone wins: the agencies, the communities they serve, and the technology industry as a whole.

Make interoperability a selling point

“If vendors approach their data practices from a closed-off perspective — by locking in customers’ data, claiming the data formatting is proprietary, and refusing to show customers how their databases are structured — public safety agencies are likely to view it as a “competitive disadvantage,” Augustine said.

“My advice to vendors is to use the openness of data as a competitive advantage,” Augustine said. “If you sell the concept that the data belongs to the customer, if you sell that and are passionate about it, customers will come.”

Next steps for shifting the culture of police data

Openness and interoperability are critical to solving the issue of data fragmentation in law enforcement. To achieve these standards across the public safety industry, agencies must shift their approach to data management and technology procurement — and vendors must shift their approach to customer retention. Dive deeper into the state of police data and the fight for industry-wide data democratization with Peregrine’s e-book, Own Your Data: Interoperability and the Risks of Vendor Lock-In.