UCR Redevelopment Project

The Criminal Justice Information Services Division has chartered the FBI UCR Redevelopment Project (UCRRP) to manage the acquisition, development, and integration of a new information system solution. The stated goal of UCRRP is to improve UCR efficiency, usability, and maintainability while increasing the value to users of UCR products. UCRRP will:

Decrease the time it takes to analyze data and respond sooner with data quality questions and concerns.
Dramatically reduce, to the point of eliminating, the exchange of printed materials between submitting agencies and the FBI.
Provide an external data query tool to allow public users the ability to view and analyze published UCR data from the Internet.
Implement a flexible and scalable systems framework, including industry standard interfaces that better accommodate future changes.

Beginning July 1, 2013, the FBI will no longer accept hard copy submissions for the FBI UCR Program’s Summary Reporting System (SRS). This includes printed UCR forms, scanned images, Portable Document Format files, and nonstandard Excel workbooks. The FBI will not accept any submission format that the FBI UCR Program staff must manually enter. However, if a state UCR Program cannot meet the deadline but can demonstrate a credible plan for the migration from hard copy to electronic submissions, it will be granted a 12-month extension. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) will be notified by letter if its plan is approved. A credible plan must meet the following criteria:

The plan must have a realistic schedule to transition crime data submissions from paper to an acceptable electronic submission format by July 1, 2014.
The plan must prove that the agency and the state UCR Program have the resources and/or funding to implement the transition.
The state UCR Program must demonstrate executive support for the plan.
The law enforcement agency or state UCR Program must be able to submit data electronically by July 1, 2014, using one of the following four options:

Option 1: XML Data Specifications

The UCRP developed the Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD), which provides the XML or Extensible Markup Language interface specifications that comply with the 2.1 National Information Exchange Model or NIEM and 3.1 Logical Entity Exchange Specifications or LEXS (both are data standards for information exchange). The specifications are available for all current data submissions including data for the SRS, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA), Hate Crime Statistics, and Cargo Theft.

Option 2: Traditional Flat File Data Specifications

LEAs may adopt the current electronic flat file formats for the SRS, the NIBRS, LEOKA, and the Hate Crime Statistics and Cargo Theft data collections. The specifications are available on the UCR’s Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Law Enforcement Online (LEO) at www.leo.gov.

Option 3: Online Data Entry

When the New UCR system is implemented, LEAs will be able to access a web data entry tool and enter data directly into the FBI UCR database. This feature will be available to LEAs with access to the FBI’s leo.gov or cjis.gov domains.

Option 4: FBI-Provided Summary Excel Workbook and Tally Book

LEAs may submit data via an Excel Workbook and Tally Book to collect UCR data in a standard format that can be read and processed by the existing and New UCR system. The Workbook will automatically populate calculated fields and perform basic error checking. The Tally Book was designed to electronically capture data for those LEAs that do not have a records management system. To assist agencies with electronically submitting data, the following manuals have been updated and are available:

The Summary Reporting System Technical Specification includes the specifications for submitting the annual number of full-time law enforcement employees. LEAs may also report police employee data via the Excel Workbook and Tally Book.

LEAs are asked to send an e-mail to ucr@leo.gov with a brief description of its plans or concerns about the July 1, 2013 deadline.

UCRRP Status-March 4, 2013

Uniform Crime Reporting Redevelopment Project (UCRRP)

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Redevelopment Project (UCRRP) was chartered to design and replace the existing, legacy functionality which has grown unsustainable over the 30+ years since its initial deployment. The UCRRP was awarded to SRA International, Inc./Platinum Solutions, Inc., in December 2010 based upon a proposed solution which relied heavily upon a pre-integrated stack of Oracle products. The elegance and simplicity of the design made a compelling case for the heavy reliance on a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solution.

As the development effort progressed, unanticipated effort was required to complete the COTS tool integration and began to impact the delivery schedule. Subsequently, UCRRP became four months behind schedule in accomplishing the Integration Test Readiness Review (I-TRR). The I-TRR, originally scheduled for 05/08/2012, was finally conducted on 09/13/2012. Additional project delays were introduced when difficulties were encountered in completing integration testing. The planned achievement of the System Test Readiness Review (S-TRR), the next step in the FBI’s Life Cycle Development process, which was schedule for 10/29/2012, has yet to be completed.

Given these delays and the continued issues being encountered by the UCRRP development contractor, the 04/15/2013 date for the Initial Operating Capability (IOC) will not be realized. Compounding concerns over this delay in schedule is the contractual expiration on 11/18/2013, of the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division System of Services Refreshment Program (SoSRP), the UCRRP master contract, under which the UCRRP development effort was issued. This expiration presents a “hard stop” to activities for UCRRP, under the master contract.

In late 2011, a subsequent phase had been added to UCRRP. Phase-3 would add the capability for New UCR to act as both a federal and state crime reporting solution. The FBI chose the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) as a partner to trial this enhanced capability. UCRRP would be enhanced, at no cost to SLED, to provide a “shared management solution” for processing crime report data. Phase-3 was scheduled to overlap the UCRRP implementation and was to be completed in the mid-to-late summer 2013.

In response to these delays, the UCRRP Project Management Office (PMO) has decided to suspend development of the Phase-3 Shared Management trial and focus all efforts on completing the core UCRRP solution. It is believed the development contractor will be unable to complete Phase-3 work within the time remaining for the master contract. As such, some tasking planned for Phase-3 will be pulled into the initial UCRRP and delivered at the IOC. This is expected to further impact the development schedule. The UCR Program will revisit the implementation of Phase-3 after IOC of the New UCR system is successfully achieved.

The UCRRP development contractor is currently preparing a revised plan for completing the development of the New UCR system. This plan is expected to be provided to the FBI in 02/2013 and will likely show significant delays to this systems development effort. The current development contractor schedule has the New UCR reaching its Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in Jan 2014.

Although these delays have altered the FBI’s UCR Program internal plans for the New UCR system, for the most part, they should not present an impact to system changes being made by data submitters to address the previously published new format specifications. Internally, the UCR Program is putting in place alternative processes to allow data submitters to continue with their system upgrades or changes and submit data in the new formats as previously anticipated. To assist state programs and direct contributors in understanding what will change going forward and detail the anticipated business impacts of this delay on the UCR Program operations, the following is provided:

Publications: The FBI, CJIS Division, Law Enforcement Support Section, Crime Statistics Management Unit (CSMU) will continue processes for the creation of the 2012 UCR Publications (Crime in the United States [CIUS], Law Enforcement Officers Killed & Assaulted [LEOKA], Hate Crime, etc.), as well as, the 2013 Mid-Year Data Release using the legacy UCR system. No impact to reporting.
Data Submissions Using the New 2013 Specifications: For agencies who send updates to 2012 submissions along with their new 2013 submissions (which may or may not include the new data collection requirements [i.e. new definition of rape, offender ethnicity, new race data values, human trafficking offenses, etc.]), the UCR Program has the ability to separate the 2012 data from the 2013 data and process the data separately for the 2012 and 2013 publications. In addition, the UCR Program will incorporate any new 2013 reporting requirements that are utilized by an agency in the 2013 publication. This means there will be no impact to the agencies or to state reporting.
New Definition of Rape: The specifications for the flat-file formats (both the National Incident Based Reporting System [NIBRS] and the Summary Reporting System [SRS]) and the Microsoft Excel Workbook/Tallybook were updated to reflect the changes required to handle the new definition of rape. The UCR Program will be able to process submissions using either the new flat-file formats or the Workbook/Tallybook which include the new definition of rape. No impact to reporting.
Human Trafficking: The specifications for the flat-file formats (both NIBRS and SRS) and the Microsoft Excel Workbook/Tallybook were updated to reflect the changes required to handle the submission of Human Trafficking. The UCR Program will be able to process submissions using either the new flat-file formats or the Workbook/Tallybook which include Human Trafficking data. No impact to reporting.
Error Logs: Because the majority of the data submitted to the UCR Program for 2012 and 2013, will be processed by the legacy UCR System, the error logs will remain the same. Nonetheless, any data using 2013 specifications which were provided to the UCR Program, will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and error reporting provided as appropriate. This could have an impact on state programs which have adopted the 2013 formats in processing and resolving data submission errors.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) File Format: The XML File Format was developed to support the new system’s operation and for future submissions to the UCR Program. The development contractor is continuing to refine the XML to flat-file conversion process and has identified several changes to the current UCR IEPD. It is anticipated that there may be additional changes until integration testing has fully completed and verified the Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD). Therefore, XML submissions will not be accepted until the New UCR System is operational. It is believed that this will only have an impact to state programs that had planned to provide XML submissions to the UCR Program prior to winter 2014.

Points of contact for additional information or questions:

For current data submissions, please contact your state’s UCR Program point of contact.
For Excel Workbook/Tallybook Program, please contact the CSMU Program Development Group, specifically, Mark Bush at (304) 625-3503 or by e-mail at mark.j.bush@leo.gov.
For data specifications and how to locate them on the web, contact Leslie Underwood at (304) 625-4018 or by e-mail at leslie.underwood@leo.gov. Access information for the specification can also be found in the UCR State Program Bulletins or the UCR Newsletters which are available on the Law Enforcement Online UCR Special Interest Group.

Sections

UCR Redevelopment Project