Award-winning Criminal Justice Data Exchange Connects the Dots like Never Before 

With its initial roll out in March 2008, the National Data Exchange (N-DEx) criminal justice information sharing system has enabled criminal justice agencies to “connect the dots” like never before between seemingly unrelated incidents across jurisdictional boundaries. The system enables investigators and analysts the ability to share incident reports, correlate crime data and collaborate on criminal justice investigations on a national basis.

N-DEx currently can provide up to 100,000 users access to “entity resolution” searches on incident and case reports. This helps to identify possible matches based on information (names, addresses, phone numbers, evidence, etc.) from multiple records including arrest, booking and incarceration data. Upon completion in 2010, the N-DEx system will allow up to 200,000 investigators in the nation’s 18,000 local, state, tribal and federal criminal justice agencies to access incident, investigative and incarceration information from across disparate systems and jurisdiction boundaries.

N-DEx was jointly developed by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division and Raytheon Company. The system has been recognized with a Government Computer News 2009 Agency Information Technology Award. It is one of 10 government agency projects to be distinguished as outstanding IT initiatives for 2009.

“Our partnership with Raytheon has enabled us to provide the criminal justice community with a state-of-the-art system and to support the FBI’s mission of keeping our communities safe,” said Dan Roberts, assistant director of the FBI CJIS division. “We are honored that N-DEx has been recognized for its outstanding achievement in advancing information sharing and increased collaboration between criminal justice agencies in our country.”

Award winners were profiled in the October 12, 2009, issue of the magazine and also were honored at its 22nd Annual Awards Gala, held October 22, 2009, in Washington, D.C.

“The GCN Award validates the hard work and exceptional partnership between the FBI and Raytheon that went into developing N-DEx,” said TW Scott, Raytheon Information Solutions vice president. “We are excited to continue to work closely with the FBI and our partners to deliver the most secure, effective and reliable information sharing solutions for the criminal justice community.”