Pegasus And The Global Justice Xml Data Model: The Implementation Plan

The Pegasus Program is taking steps to deploy nationwide the Pegasus Local-to-Local (L2L) data-sharing program for law enforcement agencies. Pegasus strives to establish a uniform data model to satisfy the everyday needs of local police departments; 225 agencies in 31 states are currently enrolled.

The program is also a part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative to develop a “group of groups” involving upwards of 30 independent organizations. The program also endeavors to get local law enforcement to agree to the design of the program, based on the Global Justice XML Data Model.

Now in its first year of implementation, the Pegasus Program has brought to light such things as inadequate computing and bandwidth resources among many law enforcement agencies, the use of multiple, dissimilar systems among local agencies, and agencies’ dependency on their vendors.

Pegasus intends to convince local agencies to migrate to the program over the course of several years, boost collaboration among local software vendors, conduct focus group sessions to get agency buy-in, and concentrate on added value and functionality to meet the requirements outlined by local agencies.

Pegasus agencies have access to more than 6 million records, a number which is expanding daily. Congress has also approved funds for the upkeep of the current system for fiscal year 2005 and for incorporating additional features.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from Sheriff (02/05) Vol. 57, No. 1, P. 50; Ferrell, Tommy.