Mastering Data Management

More in Government

• More Mobile, More Competitive Government
• We Are Our Own Columbos
• The End of the Social Security Number?
• Five Rules of Successful Identity and Social Network Analysis

More from Scott Schumacher

• Why Merging is Evil
• Two Approaches to Statewide Patient Identification
• How Accuracy Has Changed
• Meeting an Olympic-Size Security Challenge

Share this Post

Recent Comments

• Lorraine Fernandes on Response: A Universal Identifier Isn’t a Silver Bullet
• Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen on Response: A Universal Identifier Isn’t a Silver Bullet
• Response: A Universal Identifier Isn’t a Silver Bullet | Mastering Data Management on 3 Best Practices in Identity Management

Tracking a vehicle as an entity can help law enforcement across state lines.

Entities of interest extend beyond individuals, vehicles or weapons. Take, for example, an incident report. An incident report is a collection of entities such as suspect, victim, witness, location and object (vehicle, weapon, etc.), all associated through defined relationships with a date-time stamp. This collective is a complex entity.

The sub-entities comprising the complex entity can then be resolved at a lower level. Thus if a suspect is present within two separate incident reports with partial information in each, entity resolution technology works to identify correct data with high confidence, benefitting both incident reports through improved accuracy. This can be done for each sub-entity type within the complex entity.

Resolving the lower-level entities within complex entities also enables the identification and management of relationships across different complex entities. Returning to the incident report example, if data relating to a known suspect appears in different incident reports, law-enforcement officials may assume a high likelihood of involvement by this individual in the separate incidents.

A Case Study: Sharing Across State Lines

Now, take this scenario beyond the local example to sharing suspect information between and among jurisdictions, states and even countries.

Let’s say Pennsylvania and Illinois state law-enforcement agencies were sharing information about incident reports. The entity-resolution technology determined that one suspect was involved in several incidents across state lines.

Both states have information on that suspect. Illinois records say the suspect drives a black 2002 Mercedes; Pennsylvania records indicate the suspect drives a dark late model Mercedes. Pennsylvania records show a permanent address for this suspect; Illinois records do not.

By sharing information through resolved entities, both state law-enforcement agencies gain a more complete picture. In fact, one state may have information linking this suspect to a federal drug-smuggling investigation, which could prompt the second state to further investigate the suspect’s potential tie-ins to local drug busts.

Or should the subject’s black Mercedes be pulled over for a traffic violation, upon reporting the license plate number the law enforcement officer may receive a notification that the driver should be considered dangerous and take the necessary precautions.

Types of Complex Entities

Within intelligence and integrated law enforcement, there are many different types of complex entities.

Some are physical, such as a shipping scenario wherein the entirety of the MSC Danit container ship with its crew of 21 and 14,000 containers and associated cargo manifest is the complex entity.

Some are notional, such as a terrorist network comprised of known or suspect individuals with known or suspect associations within a given geographic area.

Mission effectiveness is increased when the integrity of complex entities is improved through high-confidence resolution of component lower-level entities. Once the integrity of complex entities is improved, associations between them can be identified and acted on.

We’ve seen what entity-resolution technology can do. We’ve seen what information sharing among organizations within an entity-resolution environment can do.

Now, imagine an entity-centric future for the intelligence, homeland-security and integrated law-enforcement communities. Imagine a future that includes mission-imperative information sharing and complies with applicable classification, data privacy and security requirements.

That future can be realized today with entity-resolution technology.