City of Charlotte, North Carolina Innovation & Technology Department Drives Major Police Department’s Data Integration Projects

The City of Charlotte is one of the U.S.’s 25 largest cities and North Carolina’s largest city. Charlotte’s Innovation & Technology (I&T) department provides technology leadership, operational services, and strategic program management and executive‐level leadership for the City’s Technology Governance Policy.

NIEM supported two major Charlotte‐Mecklenberg Police Department data integration projects for regional information sharing and federal law enforcement reporting programs.

Charlotte’s first initiative integrated data with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s (NCIS) Law Enforcement Information Exchange (LInX) and “LinX Carolinas.” NCIS’s LinX is built using NIEM and information exchange package documentation (IEPD) providing interoperability with other regional and federal reporting systems.

The project resulted in secure access to regional crime and incident data, and the tools necessary to process the data, enabling investigation across jurisdictional boundaries. NCIS’s LInX provides the largest volume of data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Data Exchange (N‐DEx) System.

As the team worked on the LinX Carolinas and became familiar with NIEM and data mapping, they recognized NIEM’s value for this interface. I&T drove the implementation to use the FBI’s N‐DEx NIEM IEPD to ensure compliance with federal standards.

Charlotte’s second project was the integration of Police Department’s data with the State of North Carolina’s National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) program. Charlotte worked with the North Carolina State representatives to negotiate the NIEM data format be used for this interface.