BJS-Law Enforcement Calls for Service Data Platform_RFI.pdf

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

LAW ENFORCEMENT CALLS FOR SERVICE DATA PLATFORM

for the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ)

Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)

This Request for Information (RFI) is the initiation of market research under Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul (RFO) Part 10. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. This announcement does not constitute an Invitation for Bids (IFB), Request for Quote (RFQ), or Request for Proposal (RFP), and it should not be construed as a commitment of any kind by the Government to issue a formal solicitation or ultimately award a contract. Responses to this notice will not be accepted as offers.

The Government is exploring assigning North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code 541611 – Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services or 541720 – Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities to these services.

However, the Government is open to industry input on a more appropriate NAICS Code.

Respondents should ensure that they are properly registered in the Government’s System for Award Management at SAM.gov.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is exploring the development of a national measure of law enforcement workload and activity that includes criminal and non-criminal police-public engagement. The concept of a national law enforcement calls for service (CFS) data platform is to establish a uniform, publicly available, event-based collection of law enforcement CFS captured in computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems. BJS is seeking to understand the technical solutions that can automate the retrieval and standardization of information captured in CAD and can transform that information into an analyzable data system with uniform data elements and values. The CFS data platform will serve as (1) a national repository of law enforcement organizational information and CFS data, (2) an analytic tool providing actionable insights to local law enforcement, and (3) a platform for disseminating data via a public dashboard. BJS requests information on best practices for developing and maintaining a technical solution that supports the CFS data platform requirements.

Background The Department of Justice (DOJ) has two national measures of crime, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and BJS’s National Crime Victim Survey (NCVS). The UCR collects information about crimes known to law enforcement and the NCVS captures details of criminal victimization reported by household members. While both measures provide national estimates of crime, neither system records information on non-criminal police engagement.

Policing encompasses a set of activities broader than just responding to crime. Research indicates most CFS are related to non-violent and largely non-criminal events (Horwitz & Asher, 2020)1.

1 Horwitz, B. & Asher, J. (2020). Assessment of Austin Police Department Calls for Service. Retrieved from https://austinjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Analysis-of-Austin-Police-Department-Calls-for-Service-3.pdf.

https://austinjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Analysis-of-Austin-Police-Department-Calls-for-Service-3.pdf https://austinjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Analysis-of-Austin-Police-Department-Calls-for-Service-3.pdf

Jurisdictional studies indicate only 20% to 40% of events captured in CAD systems are documented as a crime incident, and subsequently recorded in the UCR (Lum, Koper, and Wu, 2021). As such, up to 80% of police engagement events are not recorded or analyzed nationally.

Law enforcement workload and response cannot be measured in the absence of data on non-criminal police engagement. National information on both criminal and non-criminal engagement is needed to understand the nuances of policing and operational issues faced by law enforcement agencies. Statistical data on law enforcement workload and response can inform operational decisions and policies related to resource usage, response time, officer safety, improving resident services, and addressing other community issues, such as drug abuse and mental illness.

Calls for Service (CFS) Law enforcement CFS can be received through public-initiated contacts (e.g., 9-1-1 calls, flagging down an officer), police-initiated events, and security systems (e.g., alarm dispatch).

Public-initiated calls generally occur through an emergency telephone service, such as 9-1-1, and these include calls for service to not only law enforcement, but also to fire departments and emergency medical services (EMS) to assist in addressing, resolving, or correcting a particular situation. While fire and EMS services are critical to public safety across the United States, the data requested for the CFS data platform are limited to CFS that involved law enforcement services. Public-initiated CFS serve as a window into the needs and requests that community members have of police, while officer-initiated events provide critical insights into proactive and administrative actions taken by officers. The CFS data platform should capture all forms of law enforcement CFS and distinguish events by source of origin.

Although the CFS data platform seeks to store law enforcement CFS data only, it should be compatible with the National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) and the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) to promote interoperability across emergency services data.

Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) A CAD system is a specialized application that allows agencies to coordinate communication, assign personnel to incidents, and track agency responses. The CFS data platform will be a national collection of CAD data. CAD data were selected because they (1) include criminal and non-criminal engagement, (2) capture public-initiated requests (e.g., 9-1-1 call), officer-initiated events, and alarm dispatched CFS, and (3) link the actions and outcomes of law enforcement and communities they serve. These data also include details on event type, response priority, time and data of request, time and date of response, event location, and event disposition (e.g., report taken, incident unfounded, duplicate call).

While CAD systems generate and store information about CFS and engagement events, the data can be raw and messy. CAD systems do not collect and archive data in a standard format, making it difficult to analyze, compare jurisdictions, or aggregate information nationally.

Utilizing CAD data for statistical purposes presents several challenges due to the use of decentralized systems, agency-specific customizations, lack of uniform coding schemas, data and https://neris.fsri.org/ https://nemsis.org/ format structure variations across CAD vendors, open text fields, concerns with personally identifiable information (PII), lack of auditing to ensure accuracy of entered data, limited data quality checks, and incomplete data.

Unlike crime data recorded under the standardized guidance of the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and UCR programs in each U.S. state, CAD data are often customized to meet agency needs and preferences, resulting in wide variation in the values collected for key CAD data elements. Several government agencies, nonprofit consortia, and private software providers are undertaking efforts to create interoperability among disparate CAD systems used by law enforcement. BJS will work in tandem with stakeholders to develop a specification for collecting CAD that promotes both uniformity in the data elements and values collected as well as interoperability across law enforcement and other emergency services providers.

CFS Data Platform Objectives:

1. Implement a standardized, event-based platform to record statistical data on all law enforcement CFS, including criminal and non-criminal police engagement, by utilizing automated data ingestion from CAD systems.

2. Identify the critical data elements for inclusion in CAD software that support the requirements of the CFS data platform.

3. Equip law enforcement agencies with near real-time information and analytic tools that support data-informed decision making for enhanced preparedness and response to criminal and non-criminal CFS events.

4. Disseminate national information on law enforcement workload and response.

Program Goals:

1. Quantify the type and volume of requests for law enforcement assistance at the local, state, and national levels.

2. Track all law enforcement engagement, including event details, resource allocation, and disposition.

3. Empower law enforcement with near real-time data and predictive analytics to identify community risks and enhance public safety.

4. Provide actionable intelligence to make evidence-based decisions and to justify department needs and resources.

5. Improve data sharing and communications between law enforcement and other first responders, within and across jurisdictions.

6. Utilize appropriate data protections and follow industry best practices for data integrity and security in developing NLEE’s technical architecture. The system must meet all relevant federal and state regulations for secure data handling. The NLEE platform must be hosted by a secure environment in alignment with FedRAMP Moderate level security parameters.

BJS prefers the CFS data platform be built to connect directly with existing third-party CAD software systems in partnership with vendors and the law enforcement community. The CFS data platform should capture uniform data elements from disparate CAD systems for aggregation and analysis (see NERIS Technical References as an example). BJS prefers that the CFS data platform be structured such that CAD systems (facilitated by the CAD service provider with approval from client agencies) send CFS event information automatically and securely through a CFS data platform Application Programming Interface (API) or similar technical architecture.

This collaboration will create a consistent, connected software ecosystem for law enforcement nationwide.

Anticipated Services

The purpose of this RFI is to assess the ability of industry to support BJS’s efforts to design and manage the CFS data platform. BJS is interested in innovative approaches that incorporate a phased approach to achieve the functionality of the CFS data platform described below.

Respondents should include a description of overarching tasks to accomplish the requirement over a three-year period in their submission/response.

Respondent Capabilities

The Office of Justice Programs is seeking sources that can demonstrate their experience, skills, and qualifications with projects of similar scope and size completed within the last 5 years and explain in appropriate detail how they intend to demonstrate competency in each of the points listed below:

1) Demonstrated experience managing projects of similar size and scope to meet government objectives, ensuring the quality and timeliness of deliverables, and coordinating with government funding agencies

2) Demonstrated experience with CAD event data, data cleaning, complex data transformations, and management of large-scale databases

3) Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and managing a standardized data collection schema across public safety software vendors

4) Demonstrated experience managing sensitive data or PII, controlling access, conducting disclosure review and applying disclosure avoidance techniques to large-scale datasets

CFS Data Platform Functionality: Data system that collects, combines, and analyzes CFS information from roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies (240 million CFS events annually).

The CFS data platform should include:

1. “Agency” component that stores agency-level descriptive information (e.g., agency name, ORI, address, type of agency, annual budget, staffing, jurisdictional boundaries).

The CFS data platform “agency” page will expand the organizational information collected through BJS’s Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA) by combining it with other data collected by BJS on police agencies, such as on police service areas and populations served. Agencies will be uniquely identified through their Originating Identifier (ORI) and will have the ability to edit and verify their https://neris.fsri.org/technical-reference chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https:/bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/survey/CSLLEA%20%202018.pdf chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https:/bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/survey/CSLLEA%20%202018.pdf organizational information and the boundaries of their service area. BJS anticipates requesting that each law enforcement agency verify their CSLLEA-like organizational data annually. The CFS data platform agency page should have a push notification option that will facilitate the request for annual updates to the CSLLEA-like organizational data, with a method to verify the annual update was completed by the agency (e.g., electronic signature, date).

2. “Dispatch” component that contains event data as captured in the agency’s CAD. Agency users will be able to log into the CFS data platform via their “agency” page to access their department’s CFS event data in near real-time. The “dispatch” page will contain untransformed, granular information as captured in the agency’s CAD. Data in the “dispatch” component will not be sanitized to remove PII or collapsed into categories; it will remain “raw” for agency use. CAD data will be piped into the CFS data platform regularly (daily ingestion being optimal) using APIs or similar technology to automate reporting. This connection should occur automatically and without agencies taking proactive steps to enter an event record into the platform. Agencies will own the granular, untransformed data in the dispatch component of the CFS data platform, and this view will be restricted to the agency/agencies supplying the data.

3. “Insights” component that serves as an analytical dashboard designed to transform event data into actionable operational intelligence. The insights component will act as an advanced visualization and data analytics tool for patrol, supervisors, and executive leadership. The insights dashboard will be accessible through the “agency” page and provide basic metrics (e.g., number and type of CFS) and interactions of elements (e.g.

call type by location or time) to inform resource allocation, predictive analytics, community risk, and tactical response. This automated data processing will use CAD data to give command staff a near real-time snapshot of their department’s operations as CFS events to turn data into a story.

4. “Collaboration” component that enables agencies to share their data with other jurisdictions (e.g., municipalities within a county, bordering jurisdictions) and across different levels of government (e.g., state UCR Program). The “collaboration” component will rely on the transformation of raw data from disparate CAD systems into standardized data elements that map to uniform aggregate categories to facilitate comparative analyses.

One example is to convert a numerical value for age into discrete ranges or categories.

The collaboration component will be dashboards comprised of aggregated jurisdictional data. These dashboards will be restricted from public view and accessible to government entities with role-based or other restricted access. This will provide county agencies, MSA and regional organizations, and state authorities with access to cross-jurisdictional areas to review event data, coordination, and community risk in regional nodes.

5. “Public” component will disseminate event data that has been sanitized of PII. The public component will provide a national representation of law enforcement workload and response by quantifying and describing criminal and non-criminal law enforcement engagement. This component will account for requirements for federal statistical data, including concerns related to generalizability, standardization, data quality, privacy, and security. The public component will utilize a dashboard to disseminate information and would ideally feature the ability to export PDF data summaries. BJS retains the option to publish a static subset (e.g., nationally representative sample of agencies, limited date range, monthly file) of data from the CFS data platform at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD). The CFS data platform should include the functionality required to create research data files for public use housed at the NACJD.

6. “Interoperability” component to link national law enforcement activity data with data collected by other first responders, such as fire services and emergency medical services.

To enhance emergency services and public safety, the CFS data platform should be compatible with NERIS and NEMIS. Linking law enforcement data with fire services and emergency medical services will enable BJS and others to identify events that require multiple types of first responders and to better understand jurisdictional-level emergency services.

Information Submission Instructions

In addition to addressing the items above, the response should also include the following information:

1) Vendor’s name, address, points-of-contact information, website, DUNS, and cage code

2) Vendor’s current business designation and socioeconomic status

3) Vendor’s government-wide contracting vehicles (i.e., GSA Schedule Contract, OASIS, etc.)

4) Vendor’s tailored capability statements explaining the complexity and amount of effort expected of this task and addressing the tasking areas of this requirement, with appropriate documentation supporting claims of organizational and staff capability

5) Vendor’s Past Performance—Provide a list of three previous contracts where similar services were provided in the last 5 years. Provide customer/Government Agency contact information where these services were provided, including contract number (if applicable), period of performance, total contract value, contracting officer contact (telephone number and email address), and contract program manager contact (telephone number and email address).

6) Based on your understanding of the requirement, please provide a NON-BINDING cost estimate range for the requirement.

7) Vendors are encouraged to provide a list of questions on and/or feedback as part of the submission. The OPTIONAL list of questions on and/or feedback shall not exceed 3 pages and will NOT be counted as part of the 10-page limit. Any OPTIONAL list of questions submitted will NOT receive a response from the Government.

8) The response to this notice is limited to 10 single-sided pages (including all attachments, charts, etc.).

9) All responses to this RFI must be submitted via e-mail to Jamila A. Garrett - Contract Specialist at: Jamila.Garrett@usdoj.gov

10) Responses to the information provided above are due no later than 12:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Responses received after this date and time may not be considered.

Telephone inquiries will not be accepted or acknowledged, and no feedback or evaluations will be provided to respondents regarding their submissions. Interested vendors should monitor a government point-of-entry site for further information. Your firm’s response to this RFI is appreciated.

Disclaimer and Important Notes

This RFI is for information and planning purposes only and shall NOT be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Government. This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in the response.

The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any concern responding to this notice should ensure that their response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the concern’s qualifications to perform the work.

Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation MAY be published. However, responses to this notice will NOT be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

The Government will NOT accept requests for meetings or briefings and may not answer any questions posed. No phone solicitations or email with regard to the status of a solicitation will be accepted prior to its release. Information and materials submitted in response to this notice WILL NOT be returned.

The Government will not pay for the preparation of any information submitted. As a result of this notice, the Government MAY issue a solicitation. There is no solicitation available at this time.

However, should such a requirement materialize, no basis for claims against the Government shall arise as a result of a response to this RFI or the Government’s use of such information as either part of our evaluation process or in developing specifications for any subsequent requirement.

Confidentiality

No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).

mailto:Jamila.Garrett@usdoj.gov