i2 Equips Fusion Centers With Unparalleled Information Sharing Tools

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- National Fusion Center Conference -- i2, the leading provider of intelligence and investigation management software for law enforcement, defense and intelligence analysis around the globe, today unveiled the i2 Fusion Center Solution as the first and only end-to-end system that enables investigators and analysts to connect Fusion Centers across America.  The software suite will significantly enhance the ability of regional intelligence fusion centers to gather, develop, analyze and share information across agency and state divides.

Fusion Centers were created following the 9/11 attacks as a joint effort between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to ensure and facilitate collaboration and information sharing between local agencies, across state lines, and between the state and federal levels, with a particular emphasis on preventing and responding to terrorist and criminal activities.  Though many of the country's 72 Fusion Centers developed independently and remain different in size and scope, their missions are the same, and i2's new product line enables an across-the-board consistency and unprecedented information sharing capability.

"Critical information is only useful if it's shared with the right people," said i2 CEO Bob Griffin. "And that's exactly what our technology is designed to do, providing key decision makers with what they need to be proactive and predictive as opposed to purely reactive and responsive.  Senior commanders talk all the time about 'moving the decision point to the left'--in other words, taking action before a critical event occurs.  The Fusion Center Solution brings together a set of tools that law enforcement and intelligence professionals are already using at multiple levels to sift through large amounts of data from disparate sources, create actionable intelligence and disseminate it to all right levels at the right time."

As the market leader in intelligence and investigation management software, and with clients that include four out of five major police departments in the U.S., intelligence units around the globe and 30 existing Fusion Centers, i2 is eliminating information silos with a bottom-up nationwide Fusion Center backbone.  By deploying i2's Fusion Center Solution, any Fusion Center using the technology can be immediately connected to any other centers currently using COPLINK or this solution.  The result is a comprehensive, interconnected web of information whose updates are accessible in real time, and which enables users to take action quickly and decisively to prevent and solve crimes.  

"Simply put, this is the type of technology that helps us to do our jobs," said Sheriff Leroy D. Baca of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.  "It's one of the most powerful weapons we have in our arsenal, arming the human sensor at their point of need and enabling us to act quickly, decisively and correctly."

i2's Fusion Center Solution allows Fusion Center analysts to:

• Aggregate data and generate tactical leads
• Quickly see relationships through data visualization
• Be automatically notified of suspicious trends and activities
• Identify patterns to enable proactive planning and allocation of resources
• Automate repetitive and periodic searches to increase efficiency and prevent overlooking new information
• Access crime and intelligence data stored in COPLINK nodes
• Tap the analysis and visualization capabilities of the Analyst's Notebook suite
• Employ real-time workflow and collaboration software to work as a team with other agencies and fusion centers

"Having the capacity to share actionable intelligence and criminal information from state to state and around the nation by connecting all of the Fusion Centers that have COPLINK will be remarkable," said Deputy Chief Troy Smith of the Grand Junction Police Department and co-chair for the Colorado Information Sharing Consortium. "It will be the incentive for all Fusion Centers to use COPLINK to share information with all other Fusion Centers as well as those being planned.  I am very excited about the prospect and I'm pleased that we are working toward that ability."

About i2

i2 Inc. is the leading provider of intelligence and investigation solutions for defense, national security, law enforcement and commercial security. Over 4,500 organizations in 149 countries rely on the i2 Intelligence-led Operations Platform to proactively deter, prevent, predict and disrupt the world's most sophisticated criminal and terrorist threats. i2 started the intelligence revolution in 1990 and continues to lead the industry in innovation with products like Analyst's Notebook® and COPLINK®. These solutions enable public safety officers, analysts, managers, detectives and investigators to uncover hidden connections faster, deliver timely and actionable results and communicate complex situations more clearly than ever. For more information, please visit www.i2group.com.

Contact:  Ben Branham | Edelman | 212-704-4577

SOURCE i2, Inc.