In 2019, a national foundation asked for help for a state attorney general’s office to modernize its collection, aggregation, and publication of law enforcement (LE) use of force data. This undertaking is large in scope — covering the entire state and over 500 law enforcement agencies — but seemingly simple in need: better data collection.
Complexities arose, however, when navigating the various different systems (both technical and human) in place, working with limited state funding, and designing a sustainable and scalable solution (ie a collection mechanism that could be reused for other LE data).
Eventually the key deliverables were a list of civic-oriented data collection and workflow solutions and a reverse RFP — a statement of goals, not features — for SaaS vendors to compete against.
