Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, August 10, 2010,
Item 35
Now let's call back to order the voting session of the travis county commissioners court. This morning mr. Reeferseed indicated an interest in number 35. He's not here at this time. 35. Consider and take appropriate action on request to approve interlocal agreement between travis county sheriff's office and the city of austin, austin independent school district police department, georgetown police department, hays county sheriff's office, Pflugerville police department, round rock police department, san marcos police department, university of texas police department, and williamson county sheriff's office for the establishment and operation of the austin regional intelligence center and we have been very collaborative and inclusive, haven't we?
>> correct, your honor. Michael
>> [indiscernible] travis county sheriff's office. Again, unless you really want to spend a lot of time on the history of aric or what is now called aric. The project basically to some degree started in about 1990, with what you now know as the integrated justice some. In sort the aric affords us the opportunity as law enforcement agencies to share data between agencies which we know then in our business is something that the criminal enterprise preys upon is our -- either unwillingness or inability to communicate between agencies. I think travis county's initiative with the integrated justice system patched some of those holes within travis county years ago when i was more involved in that project. Today this project already has seen cases where we have been able to patch those holes. While the -- while the intelligence center is -- is currently funded by the department of justice predominantly, and is terrorism centric, i will remind people as you probably saw in the paper that when the echelon plane incident occurred, the diffusion center quickly sprang into action and was able to assist greatly and in fact all partners received an award and commendation from the department of homeland security recently for that action. What you have before you is the formal documentation, quite lengthy, that starts to formalize our true relationship between the partners and will meld into our standard operating procedures. We are currently working on that. I will point out that it references privacy policies, we have worked for the department of justice, the aclu and various other citizens groups in travis county to make sure that voices were heard and that we tried to address that in the privacy policy. We have received initial approval from the department of justice on that privacy policy and i can remind the court as well as listeners that -- that that privacy policy is not something that every fusion center across the nation enjoys. That we did learn lessons from other agencies. We tried to other entities, we looked at how they operate and we discussed with them problems that they've had so that we can learn those lessons without having to stumble on o own. Again the documentation that you had before you, the city of austin has approved and that we're requesting your permission for sheriff hamilton to enter into this agreement. One of the things that we have met our legal counsel between us and the city of austin have met and over time this document will evolve and we will fine tune some things that -- that will come up and we're aware of that and all parties are aware of that, but this is the initial cornerstone document that we would like to move forward with.
>> questions or comments?
>> question?
>> yes.
>> you had mentioned the privacy aspect of the document. One of the concerns that had been raised in the discussions at the austin city council or perhaps this is a species of the concern, but the way i phrase it is the -- the -- i'm satisfied that this has been addressed, but i thought it would be good for you to address it or mr. Connally to address it. But there is a mechanism in place to -- to -- when it comes to light that there's erroneous data in this shared database, that it can be identified and corrected throughout the entire database. One thing i ran into in my previous incarnation on the third floor. Sometimes you would get a false i.d. And you would have to get the false i.d. Changed at every law enforcement database to which this person might come in contact with. So i just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.
>> absolutely. That's a good point, commissioner eckhardt. We have heard that concern from various entities. One of the things, just from kind of a data sharing situation, that we are -- we are not creating new data with this, we are -- we are pulling in data to a centralized data warehouse. I know that you hear that term from its routinely, to a centralized data warehouse. We certainly do have mechanisms so that that data is vetted certainly before it gets to us, which is required by d.p.s. Policy. As well as vetted once in place in the data warehouse. We also have policies and procedures that will address exupunctions, if erroneous data is found, how it will be removed. Again the data has been scrubbed from each entity. We did not want to replicate or spend taxpayer money, whether it be federal or local, to come up with new systems we already had in place. That's why i mentioned the integrated justice system with travis county, now a decades old system that we have. We put a lot of work and energy into that. And have been very happy. We've passed numerous audits from the state on our data quality. And we would like to make sure that this new data warehouse is pulling from that same, good data that we have. Again, all partners are under the same review with it through our systems. So we're very confident. But it is something that we know that there's a concern out there. It would be a concern if i were, you know, a private citizen and not just in law enforcement. That we do want to make sure that we are doing that. You've probably also learned that -- that again our goal is to combat crime. That this is a crime centric situation that we're dealing with. Again, we know that the criminal element doesn't play by the rules. They may share information much more readily than we do. And again we're trying to correct that situation. And this is our first step in doing so. If that answers your question.
>> it does, thank you.
>> i think that answers all of microchip, too.
>> all right -- all of mine, too.
>> all right, sir.
>> move approval.
>> and that we authorize the county judge to sign the document on our behalf. Discussion of the motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 2010 1:30 PM
