The operation in question is called CLEMIS, which stands for Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information Systems.
Based in Oakland County — part of the Detroit metro area — the organization's roots go back to 1968 with three agencies. It now serves about 250, and the county provides $1.4 million in annual funding for the organization, with member agencies charged based on their size and other factors.
CLEMIS allows members to share data that can help with both daily operations and long-term planning. The goal of ongoing changes is to not only attract more agencies to the database but offer a marketplace for vendors and others who can provide services to those members, according to EJ Widun, Oakland County’s chief technology officer.
By 2030, he told Government Technology, he hopes CLEMIS will grow to 2,000 agencies in 10 states, with members accessing the database via the cloud. The database also will gain its own independent operating authority instead of being supervised by Oakland County.
“Crime doesn’t really have a border,” is how he described one of the animating ideas behind the ongoing and upcoming changes at CLEMIS.
CLEMIS operations are moving from a county data center to Amazon Web Services, he said.
“That’s going to allow us to become device agnostic,” he said, meaning police officers can use various devices to share and gain information instead of, say, specific laptops.
He said the “drop-dead date” for that work is December 2026. CLEMIS also is working with Tyler Technologies to boost the database’s technology and appeal.
New tools also will help enhance the attractiveness of the database, Widun said.
That includes web search and the use of artificial intelligence. An upcoming offering will let police use voice search to, for instance, search for automobiles involved in hit-and-run accidents via such attributes as partial plates and vehicle color.
He said CLEMIS also is working on a way to make sure its services are affordable for smaller agencies.
“No agency left behind” is how he put it.
He also envisions CLEMIS hooking into other databases, further extending its use for police agencies so that they “can track crime all the way through.”
