Gangs continue to pose a threat to many US communities.
To stem the growth of gangs and related criminal activity
in the United States, the FBI, in coordination with
the Department of Justice, established the National
Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC). The center will integrate
the gang intelligence assets of the FBI and other federal,
state, and local law enforcement entities to serve as
a centralized intelligence resource for gang information
and analytical support.
The NGIC’s mission is to support law enforcement
agencies through timely and accurate information sharing
and strategic/tactical analysis of federal, state, and
local law enforcement intelligence focusing on the growth,
migration, criminal activity, and association of gangs
that pose a significant threat to communities throughout
the United States.
The FBI Information and Technology Branch (ITB)
is assisting the NGIC through development of functional
requirements and preparation of documents to enter into
FBI Life Cycle Management process. The NGIC provides
two major business activities that require information
technology (IT) to expedite, automate, and enhance intelligence
cycle activities related to gangs. The research function
incorporates responding to requests for information
(RFI) to provide gang intelligence to federal, state,
and local law enforcement personnel nationwide. The
analysis function includes strategic and tactical analysis
of gang intelligence from various sources. These two
basic activities are functions that can readily be aligned
with the Federal Enterprise Architecture Business Reference
Model (FEA BRM) and FBI Enterprise Architecture. The
alignment of NGIC activities to enterprise architecture
models allows IT planners to holistically view and understand
the business, technical, and service requirements of
NGIC for actions such as systems acquisition, development,
and integration. Solutions developed for meeting NGIC
IT requirements are enterprise-based. Enterprise-based
planning leverages services, applications, systems,
and other resources to enable the most efficient response
for providing IT support to the NGIC.
The CIO’s Office of IT Policy and Planning (OIPP)
coordinated initial assistance to the NGIC by developing
an IT Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and assisting NGIC
to develop their Mission Needs Statement, and Business
Plan. These documents provided information that was
useful in identifying business function requirements,
service component requirements, and technical service
requirements. In turn, these business-driven functional
requirements provide the foundation for developing specific
IT technical requirements and technical alternatives.
The first two steps in this methodology are conventional
business planning and development activities performed
by a Program Manager. In satisfaction of these activities,
the NGIC Program Manager prepared an NGIC Mission Needs
Statement, an NGIC CONOPS Phase I (with particular attention
to the IT Requirements Appendix), and an NGIC Business
Case (developed in partial completion of the OMB Exhibit
300).
The third activity in the IT CONOPS Process identifies
initial business-driven profiles of the NGIC program
based on the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Reference
Models. The FEA consists of a set of five interrelated
“reference models” designed to facilitate cross-agency
analysis and the identification of duplicative investments,
gaps and opportunities for collaboration within and
across agencies. Collectively, the reference models
comprise a framework for describing important elements
of the FEA in a common and consistent way.
The ITB continues to support the NGIC IT activities
through development of the final business case and preparation
for the Investment Management/Project Review Board (IMPRB)
and other control gates of the FBI Life Cycle Management
Directive
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