Raytheon finishes first phase of FBI data system

Raytheon Co. has installed the first phase of the FBI's National Data Exchange law enforcement information system.

The N-DEx system is designed to allow the bureau's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division and law enforcement agencies nationwide to share incident reports, correlate crime data and collaborate on criminal justice investigations.

The system will gather law enforcement data from CJIS, as well as local, state, tribal and other federal agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service. Ownership of data shared through N-DEx will remain with the agency that provided it, FBI said.

Raytheon is providing design, development, engineering and implementation services as part of a $41 million contract awarded to the company in February 2007. It also will provide user support, operations and maintenance once N-DEx is completed.

N-DEx's nationwide capability to share information will expedite coordination across law enforcement "so that we can remain one step ahead of the criminals and terrorists despite jurisdictional boundaries," Zalmai Azmi, chief information officer at the FBI, said in a statement.

The first increment gives 50,000 users the ability to capture case data and conduct entity resolution on incidents and arrest data, Raytheon said. Entity resolution identifies possible candidates for known aliases, based on information ? name, address, phone number, etc. ? in multiple records. The system then correlates the data, identifies candidates for consideration and presents the information to users for further analysis.

The N-DEx system is expected to be fully operational in 2010. It will then enable 200,000 investigators at up to 18,000 local, state, tribal and federal enforcement agencies to collect and share information across disparate systems and jurisdiction boundaries.

The N-DEx system marks the first time that local, county, state and federal information will be shared openly, said Thomas Bush, assistant director of CJIS, which is based in Clarksburg, W.Va.

Raytheon of Waltham, Mass., ranks No. 6 on Washington Technology's 2007 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.