Interagency data sharing: Overcoming barriers to drive collaboration

• Effective cross-jurisdictional collaboration involves building solid interagency relationships and implementing efficient data-sharing practices. 

• Major challenges to interagency collaboration in law enforcement include internal resistance, restrictive data-sharing policies, siloed information systems, and vendor lock-in. 

• Data integration technology enables law enforcement agencies to share information seamlessly and securely, even if they use different data systems. 

Offenders don't always work within jurisdictional boundaries. They’re often on the move, requiring law enforcement agencies in different jurisdictions to exchange information and strategize incident response for more efficient investigations.

Research illustrates the overwhelming benefits of interagency collaboration in public safety. Still, agencies often face technical challenges and other obstacles to sharing information across jurisdictions. The solutions to those challenges rely on interpersonal communication, sensible policies, and effective data integration technology.

Collaborating across jurisdictions

When offenders operate across city, county, or even state lines, the law enforcement agencies in those jurisdictions must work together to respond and safeguard their communities. Relationship-building and data sharing are key to effective interagency collaboration.

Developing relationships with partner agencies

Retired New Jersey State Police Captain Leonard Nerbetski moderated an interagency collaboration panel discussion at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) 2024 conference, where he emphasized the importance of relationship-building between law enforcement agencies.

“If you’re introducing yourself in the middle of a crisis to one of your partners, you’ve got a challenge ahead of you,” Nerbetski said. “Knowing each other ahead of time and having those relationships before a crisis starts is critically important. Being able to develop those relationships is key to success.”

With strong relationships and effective processes for information sharing in place, neighboring agencies can enhance community safety by:

• Coordinating strategies for incident response

• Sharing resources to track and combat crime more effectively

• Reducing duplicative efforts

• Closing intelligence gaps

Sharing data for enhanced collaboration

To collaborate successfully, agencies must be able to share data across jurisdictions. 

Research shows that public safety institutions see overwhelming benefits from cross-jurisdictional data sharing. A 2016 study of law enforcement agencies in King County, Washington, found that because neighboring agencies often work with a shared pool of offenders, data sharing gives those agencies a more accurate picture of regional crime. The study also found that data sharing enables agencies to more effectively identify priority offenders in their home areas. 

But sharing crime-related information isn’t always a smooth road. Nerbetski explained that agencies in different jurisdictions must align on a few key components before they can confidently exchange data. 

“It’s been my experience in law enforcement that if you want to effectively share and collaborate and be able to share information in a critical incident, you have to have three main things accomplished,” Nerbetski said. “Those three main things are people, policy, and technology.” 

• People: The people involved must be of the right mindset. They have to be “bought in,” as Nerbetski put it, on information sharing. 

• Policy: The policies regulating how agencies may use and share their data must allow for a seamless and secure exchange of information.  

• Technology: Because technology underpins the entire data-sharing process, it must be highly capable and policy-compliant. 

“When you can have those three legs of the stool, you can really share information very effectively,” Nerbetski said. 

Challenges of cross-jurisdictional data sharing 

When it comes to sharing data across jurisdictions, agencies often face obstacles tracing back to those three pillars Nerbetski described: people, policy and technology.

Getting the right people on board

The King County law enforcement collaboration study showed that the most common challenge to data sharing was reluctance among personnel to provide other agencies with crime-related information.

The study quoted one participant as saying some personnel don’t see the value of sharing information because they only care about their specific jurisdictions, they do not want other agencies to steal credit, or they don’t want outside agencies to interfere in their cases.

“That’s been a big battle that we fought ... trying to convince people,” the study participant said. “What’s the use of having all this information if you’re not going to share it with somebody else?”

Another participant noted that some data must stay confidential to protect witnesses and preserve the integrity of investigations. In this sense, data sharing is a balancing act: You want to share enough information to collaborate effectively but not so much that you potentially expose witnesses or put an investigation at risk. 

Navigating restrictive policies 

Rules and regulations can also impact agencies' ability to share data. For example, California — like many states — restricts the use and exchange of license plate data among public agencies. California law prevents agencies from sharing license plate information unless they can provide certain documented assurances about how that data will be used. In cases involving license plate data as critical evidence, such regulations can hinder collaborative investigations. 

At the IACP panel, Nerbetski offered a similar example from his time with the New Jersey State Police, where federal policies would sometimes prevent the exchange of critical information with outside organizations. 

Nerbetski explained: The Regional Operations Intelligence Center, New Jersey’s fusion center, has maintained a strong partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The agencies historically collaborated by exchanging information through a web-based application — until an interpretation of the Tiahrt Amendments severely restricted the ATF’s ability to disclose crime gun trace data. 

“That’s a real-world example where we have the need, we have the means, we have the people bought in, and then we have these policy prohibitions that really prevent us from being able to effectively share information,” Nerbetski said. “It took a lot of effort, time, and several meetings to get the issue resolved.”

Integrating siloed data systems 

According to the King County law enforcement study, another major challenge associated with interagency data sharing is “a lack of consistency in record collection management.” In many cases, different law enforcement agencies use different record management systems (RMSs) to store, organize, and leverage their data. 

Though all RMSs serve the same foundational purpose, different types of RMSs may code, consolidate, and store data differently. In other words, they may speak different languages and be unable to communicate with each other. So when different agencies use different RMSs, those variations can create information silos and make data sharing technically difficult. 

The study quoted a crime analyst on this issue: “If it’s not compatible with our record management system, or if it’s not compatible with another jurisdiction’s either, they don’t participate ... or there are extra processes involved in getting the data uploaded, in which case [it] takes [a] longer time [to get the data]. All of [this] stuff takes time for us to get, and by the time we get it, we’re [already] looking at new [crime] trends.” 

Another crime analyst quoted in the study said that within a single county, seven agencies might use seven different RMSs, making "consolidating data so messy.” 

“Some way to unify that data on a county level at least ... would make things so much faster and easier,” the analyst said. 

Dealing with vendor lock-in 

Vendor lock-in happens when a tech provider keeps its customers from accessing and exporting their data in open, industry-standard, non-proprietary formats. If two partner agencies use different data platforms that aren’t compatible, the organizations may be unable to exchange critical information.  

Vendor lock-in is an increasingly common problem in law enforcement, particularly among automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems. At the IACP panel, Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief and Chief Information Officer John McMahon described his industry’s growing need for open and interoperable tech providers. 

“Our technology vendors want to be the end-all and be-all and monopolize the whole technology stack for every one of our organizations,” he explained. 

McMahon said the onus is on providers to act as “strategic partners” to both law enforcement agencies and other tech vendors. 

“We need a partnership that allows technology to work with one another, regardless of what other agencies’ technology stacks may look like,” he said.  

Streamlining interagency collaboration with Peregrine 

Public safety agencies can share data simply and securely across jurisdictions by leveraging user-friendly, regulation-compliant data integration technology. Peregrine integrates data from otherwise-siloed systems — including RMSs, ALPR systems, and computer-aided dispatch systems — so users can share their data quickly and easily on a single, unified platform. Here’s how: 

• Security by design. Peregrine was built using best-in-class security practices, including CJIS compliance and modern encryption standards. 

• Granular access controls. Peregrine allows users to control when, how, and with whom they share their data.  

• Powerful search capability. Peregrine’s universal search system lets users search across all of their source systems — as well as partnering agencies’ systems — to identify the information they need, fast. 

• Vendor-agnostic data integration. Peregrine provides an integrated data asset that’s not tied to any particular vendor. This adds a layer of protection for customers struggling to access, export, or leverage their data due to vendor lock-in. 

To learn more about how Peregrine supports interagency collaboration in law enforcement, download our 21st Century Policing e-book.