RFI Digital Evidence Management System.pdf

RFI Digital Evidence Management System

New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Office of Fire Prevention and Control

Request for Information (RFI)

Digital Evidence Management System

Issued: 09/17/2026

Responses Due: 10/15/2026

Purpose

The New York State (NYS) Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES), Office of Fire Prevention and Control (OFPC) is seeking information and collecting input from interested parties regarding a Digital Evidence Management System in preparation of a Request for Proposals (RFP) or an Invitation for Bid (IFB).

DHSES’s goals in issuing this RFI are to:

• Identify available Digital Evidence Management Systems (DEMS) capable of supporting the secure collection, storage, management, retrieval, retention, sharing, archiving, export, and authorized disposition of digital evidence.

• Evaluate modern technologies and industry capabilities, including cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid solutions, that can improve use, operational efficiency, mobile access, and administrative effectiveness.

• Understand current industry standards and best practices related to evidentiary integrity, chain of custody, audit functions, access controls, records retention, cybersecurity, privacy, and data governance.

• Assess interoperability and integration capabilities with existing and future State and local systems, identity-management environments, mobile devices, cameras, investigative or case-management systems, learning or enterprise platforms where applicable, and other technologies used to collect or manage digital evidence.

• Identify capabilities for metadata management, search and retrieval, case or incident association, dashboards, analytics, reporting, and authorized access to historical data.

• Evaluate opportunities for responsible automation and artificial intelligence capabilities that may improve search, classification, transcription, redaction, review, workflow, analytics, or other administrative functions while maintaining appropriate human oversight, security, audit functions, and evidentiary controls.

• Understand scalability and long-term data-management requirements, including increasing evidence volumes, retention requirements, archival storage, backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and technology lifecycle considerations.

• Identify implementation requirements and potential challenges, including data migration, integration, bandwidth, cybersecurity, user adoption, training, configuration, validation, internal staffing, maintenance, and vendor support.

• Obtain information regarding available pricing and licensing models and the primary factors affecting initial implementation and ongoing total cost of ownership.

• Identify limitations, risks, dependencies, vendor lock-in concerns, and exit-strategy considerations that should be evaluated before development of final specifications or a future procurement.

• Potential challenges related to system development or customization.

• Elicit ideas and/or recommendations on how to structure an RFP.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes - it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or an Invitation for Bid (IFB) or a promise to issue an RFP or an IFB. This RFI does not commit DHSES, or the Office of Fire Prevention and Control (OFPC) to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Vendors are advised that DHSES will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI; all costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party’s expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP or IFB, if any are issued.

Background

OFPC is seeking information regarding potential solutions for a digital evidence storage and management environment to be utilized by OFPC’s Fire Investigations Branch. OFPC collects, utilizes, and maintains digital evidence including field notes and narrative reports, still images (photos), videos, data from Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), and other digital documentation of fire scenes in connection with fire investigations conducted throughout New York State.

OFPC is evaluating opportunities to transition to a modern centralized Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) with the capacity and capability to effectively collect, preserve, organize, retrieve, manage, and share (when authorized) digital evidence in a manner meeting OFPC’s current and future needs as collection platforms, applications, and processes continue to evolve. Ultimately, the goal is to utilize a system that improves operational and administrative efficiency and effectiveness, is easy to use, secure, provides mobile access, allows access to historical information, provides scalable tools for managing, auditing, and reporting on digital evidence, and aligns with industry best practices while meeting current and future fire investigation evidentiary and case management requirements.

The State recognizes that available solutions may include cloud-hosted, on-premises, hybrid, or other architectures. Respondents should not assume that a single existing technology, storage architecture, workflow, or evidence source will define the future environment.

The following capabilities are intended to support market research and should not be interpreted as final mandatory specifications. Respondents should identify whether each capability is native, configurable, available through integration or an optional module, under development, or not currently supported.

Digital Evidence Management Systems (DEMS) must be capable of providing the following functions:

• Investigation/Case Management

A centralized platform to track and log concurrent investigations, and, in real time, maintain detailed digital investigation records, aggregate data across multiple jurisdictions, and provide awareness of investigation status.

This must include the ability to create, manage, and track investigations of varying complexity throughout their life cycle.

• Evidence Collection and Storage

Secure collection of digital photographs, video, audio, documents, reports, and other digital file types through individual, bulk, and automated transfer from mobile devices, cameras, UAS, removable-media, and other digital sources or systems.

Preservation of original evidence files and relevant source metadata during collection or transfer, including support for hash generation or verification and duplicate detection where appropriate.

Configurable workflows for associating evidence with an investigation, incident, case, location, person, asset, or other authorized record.

• Evidentiary Integrity, Chain of Custody, and Audit Functions

Comprehensive, time-stamped chain-of-custody and audit records documenting collection, access, viewing, integrity and any modification of metadata, sharing, export, retention actions, and disposition.

Controls that protect original evidence from unauthorized alteration or deletion and support tamper-evident or immutable audit histories.

Integrity verification mechanisms, including cryptographic hashing or comparable methods, and the ability to demonstrate authenticity throughout the evidence lifecycle.

• Metadata, Search, Organization, and Retrieval

Configurable metadata fields, indexing, tagging, full-text or content search where supported, saved searches, filters, and efficient retrieval across authorized historical and active records.

Support for standardized naming, classification, case/incident association, and bulk metadata operations with appropriate permissions and audit logging.

Dashboards, reports, analytics, and supervisory tools that improve visibility into evidence status, workload, retention, storage, and system activity.

• User Roles and Administrative Management

Role-based access control, configurable user roles and permissions, least-privilege administration, privileged-user controls, and separation of duties.

Support for multi-agency, multi-unit, and geographically distributed users, including supervisory and administrative access appropriate to assigned responsibilities.

Multi-factor authentication, single sign-on and identity-management integration where available, user provisioning/deprovisioning, and detailed user activity logs.

• Security, Data Protection, and Governance

Encryption of data in transit and at rest, secure key-management practices, logging and monitoring, vulnerability management, incident-response practices, and other relevant cybersecurity controls.

Support for applicable New York State information technology, cybersecurity, privacy, records-management, and data-governance requirements.

Clear identification of data ownership, data location, subcontractors, hosting arrangements, data segregation, administrative access, and security responsibilities.

• Sharing, Disclosure, Review, and Redaction

Secure internal and external sharing with configurable access, expiration, download controls, authentication, and audit functions.

Capabilities for review, annotation, redaction, derivative/work-copy creation, and export while preserving original evidence.

Mechanisms to support authorized disclosure to external agencies, legal partners, or other approved recipients without weakening evidentiary controls.

• Interoperability and API Integration

Documented Application Programming Interface (API) and other integration methods for secure data exchange with existing and future Federal, State, local, and authorized external systems.

Data imports and exports in standard, non-proprietary formats where feasible, with support for metadata, audit information, chain-of-custody information, and integrity values.

Integration capabilities for identity management, investigative or incident-management systems, records systems, GIS or visualization platforms where applicable, mobile/camera systems, and other enterprise technologies.

Any system must adhere to New York State’s information technology policies found at https://its.ny.gov/policies.

• Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Describe currently available or planned AI-assisted capabilities such as transcription, object or content recognition, search, classification, summarization, redaction assistance, workflow prioritization, or analytics.

Identify how AI-generated outputs are distinguished from original evidence, how human review is incorporated, how model activity is logged, and whether State data is used to train vendor or third-party models.

Describe configurable controls for enabling, disabling, limiting, auditing, and governing AI functionality.

• Product Viability, Exit Strategy, and Data Portability

Product roadmap, organizational capacity, relevant governmental/public-safety/investigative experience, and long-term support model.

Ability to retrieve all State evidence, metadata, audit histories, hashes, chain-of-custody records, configuration data, and related information upon contract expiration, termination, or transition.

Available export formats, transition assistance, anticipated timeframes, costs, and measures that reduce vendor lock-in.

• Retention, Legal Hold, Archival, and Disposition

Configurable retention schedules, legal or administrative holds, archival tiers, disposition workflows, approval controls, and documented destruction or deletion.

Prevention of deletion or alteration when evidence is subject to a hold or other retention restriction.

Reporting and alerts related to retention status, pending disposition, storage utilization, and exceptions.

• Training, Implementation, Maintenance, and Support

Implementation methodology, project governance, configuration, testing, validation, deployment, change management, and anticipated implementation timelines.

https://its.ny.gov/policies

Administrator and end-user training, training materials, user guides, documentation, new-user onboarding, and refresher training.

Ongoing system maintenance and updates, technical support, system monitoring, issue resolution, service levels, upgrades, assigned support resources, and post-implementation assistance.

• Migration of Existing Evidence

Methodologies for inventorying, mapping, transferring, validating, reconciling, and documenting existing evidence and associated metadata.

Preservation and validation of chain-of-custody information, audit histories, hashes or other integrity information during migration.

Exception handling, migration acceptance testing, cutover planning, and approaches to minimize disruption to ongoing investigative operations.

• Scalability, Hosting, Availability, Backup, and Disaster Recovery

Scalable storage and performance capable of accommodating increasing evidence volumes, large file sizes, concurrent users, and high-volume ingestion.

Available hosting architectures, system availability commitments, redundancy, backup methods and frequency, recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), disaster-recovery testing, and business-continuity procedures.

Methods for maintaining or restoring access to critical evidence during outages or disruptions.

• Mobile and Field Access

A functional, secure, user-friendly mobile interface for authorized users, including evidence capture or upload, review, search, and other appropriate field workflows.

Support for limited-connectivity environments, resumable transfers, and bandwidth-efficient workflows where technically feasible.

Device and session security controls appropriate for access to sensitive digital evidence.

Guidance to Respondents

OFPC may use information obtained from responses to this RFI to make programmatic decisions and/or to develop a competitive procurement such as an RFP or IFB.

Any content that is proprietary and/or confidential must be clearly marked as such in the response. Failure to mark content as proprietary and/or confidential may result in its disclosure in the event a response is the subject of a Freedom of Information request under Public Officers Law Section 87. In any event, DHSES will determine, in its sole discretion, appropriate FOIL disclosure in accordance with Public Officers Law Section 87. All materials submitted by a respondent shall become the property of DHSES and may or may not be returned to the respondent, at the sole discretion of DHSES.

DHSES may issue announcements amending this RFI in response to questions. Any revisions to the RFI will be posted to the New York State Contract Reporter website (http:///www.nyscr.ny.gov).

DHSES may communicate with any and all third parties, about this RFI or otherwise, during the pendency of this RFI and/or following the receipt and consideration of RFI responses.

This may be through email exchanges, phone discussions, meetings, demonstrations, and/or correspondence, and may be with an individual respondent, a subset of respondents, or all respondents. As RFI responses are reviewed, DHSES reserves the right to send follow-up clarification questions to respondents of further interest.

Requested Information

Please provide the following information electronically. You may provide the requested information as a completed attachment or in the body of an email.

1) Contact Information:

a. Name of individual responding

b. Name of agency/organization

c. Mailing address

d. Email address

e. Phone number

2) Provide a brief history of your organization and describe your experience providing, developing, implementing, or supporting digital evidence storage, investigative technology, case management or comparable secure information-management systems.

3) Identify specific software, platforms, or systems your organization has previously developed, implemented or provided that are comparable to the capabilities contemplated by this RFI. Include, where applicable, status of development or implementation, length of time in production, type and size of organization served, number of users, and relevant governmental, public-safety investigative, or multi-jurisdictional experience.

4) Describe the proposed platform, including its overall architecture, hosting options, principal modules, supported evidence and data types, and core operational capabilities. Describe the platform's ability to provide a centralized environment for managing multiple concurrent incidents or investigative matters, maintaining detailed records, aggregating authorized information across organizational jurisdictional boundaries, and providing awareness of status, activities, and operational impacts.

5) Describe how the platform supports the complete digital evidence life cycle, including collection, transfer, preservation, integrity verification, metadata capture, indexing, organization association with an incident or investigative matter, search and retrieval, review, sharing, retention, legal hold, archival, export and authorized disposition.

6) Describe the platform’s architecture and controls for maintaining evidentiary and chain of custody. Address encryption, authentication, protection of original evidence, integrity verification, audit trails, tamper-evident or immutable logging, tracking of evidence access and activity, and controls designed to prevent unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or deletion.

7) Describe how your platform would support internal and external messaging, notifications, and alerts; enable collaboration across agencies and jurisdictions;

maintain communication logs and message histories; support e-mail, SMS, and in-application messages.

8) Describe the platform’s role-based access controls, configurable user roles and permissions, user provisioning and deprovisioning, privileges-user controls, supervisory and administrative access, multi-agency user management, and audit logs of user activity. Describe how authorized administrators can access and manage current historical incidents or investigative information.

9) Describe the platform’s mobile and field capabilities, including functionality available through smartphones, tablets, laptops, or other authorized devices. Address ease of use, accessibility, configurable interfaces, workflow complexity, offline or limited-connectivity functionality and features designed to reduce user burden and the learning curve of new users.

10) Describe how the platform supports API integration, system-to-system data exchange, and imports and exports using standard formats. Identify capabilities for integration with existing and future federal, state, local, and enterprise systems, including identity-management environments, investigative or incident- management systems, GIS and data-visualization platforms, mobile or camera technologies, and other authorized systems. Identify any technical dependencies, limitations, or additional costs associated with integrations.

11) Describe the platform’s capabilities for providing situational awareness and common operating picture, where applicable. Address integration with GIS and data-visualization platforms; real-time or near-real-time information; configurable dashboards; reporting; analytics; supervisory reviews; historical information; and tools for monitoring operational status, evidence activity, workload, storage, retention and other relevant metrics.

12) Describe any currently available or planned artificial intelligence, machine-learning, or automation capabilities. Examples may include transcription, content recognition, classification, advanced search, summarization, redaction assistance, workflow automation, prioritization, or analytics. Describe human-review requirements, audit functions, privacy and security controls, whether State information is or would be used to train vendor or third-party models, and the ability to enable, disable, or restrict AI functionality.

13) Describe how the proposed platform would be implemented to meet the objectives of this RFI. Address implementation methodology, project phases, configuration, testing, validation, data migration, integrity verification, cutover, change management, staffing requirements, anticipated implementation timeframe, ease of deployment, and approaches for minimizing disruption to ongoing operations.

14) Describe administrator and end-user training provided as part of implementation and ongoing operations, including training materials, user guides, documentation, new-user training, and refresher training. Describe ongoing system maintenance, updates, technical support, system monitoring, issue resolution, service levels, escalation procedures, upgrades, and post-implementation assistance.

15) Describe the platform’s ability to accommodate growth in users, evidence type, and data volume, file sizes, storage requirements, and concurrent system activity. Address system availability, redundant infrastructure, backup methods and frequency, recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), disaster-recovery testing, service-restoration procedures, and methods for maintaining access to critical information during outages or disruptions.

16) Provide a summary of available cost structures, packages, licensing models, and associated capabilities. Identify costs related to implementation, configuration, users, storage capacity, data volume, retention periods, migration, API or system integrations, training, technical support, maintenance, archival storage, data egress, professional services, optional modules, AI capabilities, and other one-time or recurring expenses. Explain how costs may change based on changes of the number of users, storage requirements, functionality, or level of service selected.

17) Identify foreseeable technical, operational, cybersecurity, migration, integration, bandwidth, staffing, implementation, legal, records-management, and cost challenges or dependencies associated with implementing and operating the proposed platform.

Identify known product limitations and potential vendor lock-in considerations.

Describe how State-owned evidence, data, metadata, audit histories, chain-of-custody records, integrity information, and configuration information can be exported or returned upon contract expiration, termination, or transition to another system, including available formats, anticipated timeframes, transition assistance, and associated costs. Finally, identify any emerging technologies, industry developments, capabilities, risks, or other considerations that the State should evaluate that have not otherwise been addressed in this RFI.

Questions

Questions regarding this RFI should be submitted via email to procurement@dhses.ny.gov prior to the due date and time noted above. Please submit your question(s) with adequate time for response. DHSES recommends allowing at least five business days. Be sure to put “RFI Digital Evidence Management System” in the subject line. Late questions may not be addressed. Questions should not contain proprietary or classified information.

Deadline for Responses

All respondents should respond to this RFI with the information requested in the section entitled “Requested Information” no later than the deadline indicated on the first page of this announcement. Responses to this RFI must be made via email.

Method: Send to: Subject Line:

Email procurement@dhses.ny.gov RFI Digital Evidence Management System mailto:procurement@dhses.ny.gov mailto:procurement@dhses.ny.gov