Since 2001, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) has been refining its computer-based data communications control center, which gives state law enforcement officials access to hundreds of data files at the national, state and local levels. The Transaction Information for the Management of Enforcement system, or eTIME, connects more than 9,000 criminal justice computers in Wisconsin and 500,000 across the United States and Canada from approximately 17,000 law enforcement agencies. Users can access files related to warrants, drivers' licenses, vehicle registration information, criminal histories, protection orders, injunction files, sex offender and corrections information, stolen property, missing persons and more.

With the vast amount of data eTIME processes and stores, Frank Ace, CIO of the Wisconsin DOJ, and Walt Neverman, the eTIME and technical services manager, embedded a reporting tool in the system. They also wanted statistical information on how the network was being used and data related to security and intrusion prevention, such as failed login information.

They needed business intellegence reporting capabilities - commonly referred to as BI - but didn't want to spend the money required for commercial business intelligence solutions from the likes of IBM and Oracle.

"Part of our challenge was to find a cost-effective way to produce reports for business managers of the system," Ace said. "In our line of business - where we collect information for the Wisconsin Crime Information Bureau - we needed to find a way to get information off systems in an effective manner."

Ace looked at a number of tools and weighed their cost and effectiveness before eventually turning to open source BI vendor JasperSoft for a lower-cost alternative to commercial BI software. Although he didn't expect the open source solution to be comprehensive and robust, he said the solution hasn't sacrificed quality.

JasperSoft's BI solution provides production reporting, interactive reporting, data analysis and data integration capabilities. The bureau has used JasperSoft's tool to provide reporting capabilities such as statistics on agency use, what transactions are being used most often, when the transactions are run, statistical information, security data and other patterns.

Ace said he hopes the detailed data reporting and analysis will provide a more effective system for law enforcement, improve service, determine maintenance needs, enhance security and reveal which agencies use eTIME the most.

The Intelligence Landscape
BI has consistently ranked a top priority for CIOs over the last few years, according to IT research firm Gartner. With the public sector storing record amounts of data, BI offers invaluable capabilities by collecting, analyzing and integrating data - and then creating detailed reports. BI provides historical, current and predictive views of business operations and supports the use of this information with data mining, analyzing, reporting and data integration features. Integrated reporting and analysis lets government managers better run an organization, improve services, identify effective strategies, enhance security and increase efficiency.

"Clearly business intelligence is one of the prioritized technologies within the government landscape today," said Rishi Sood, vice president of government consulting at Gartner. "Government CIOs believe new BI tools can help them become more efficient, improve service delivery and essentially do more with less. When looking at large-scale agency modernization plans, CIOs are demanding the insight from BI tools in order to improve performance and therefore lower cost of service delivery, or at least make service delivery more effective."

The major government segments using BI are: revenue and tax departments for modernization projects; administrative, finance, and budget offices for measuring projects' performance; and human services departments for tracking the effectiveness and progress of unemployment and social programs, Sood said.

At the federal level, numerous government agencies are using BI, including the U.S. Census Bureau, to analyze and predict demographic trends; federal health-care agencies to analyze and predict health statistics and fraud; the Labor Department to analyze