“Building a National Crime Information System”
“Building a National Crime Information System”
By Ramon Ike Villareal Señeres, CESO, CSEE
I had the privilege of bringing the National Crime Information System (NCIS) to full completion. I was the Chairman of the NCIS, concurrent to my capacity as the Director General of the National Computer Center (NCC). In the structure of the government, the NCIS was organized as a Project Management Office (PMO) under the supervision of the NCC, with me acting as the Project Manager, but complemented with officers and staff who were detailed to the project from all of the agencies belonging to the Five Pillars of Justice.
I say that I only brought it to completion, because the NCIS was started during the term of President Corazon C. Aquino, and I completed it during the term of President Joseph E. Estrada. I think that it is very important to make this clarification, because there was a widespread public perception that the NCIS was a project of President Estrada, a wrong perception that led to some opposition to the project, seemingly due to political reasons.
Setting aside all political reasons, we do need a crime information system that should be national in nature, but local in character. Depending on who is saying it, it could be said that the old NCIS as I completed it is either dead or weakened, as the case may be. The fact is, some of its surviving components are still being used by the remaining stations that used it. If it is dead, there is a need to revive it. If it is weakened, there is a need to strengthen it.
Since I only took over a project that was almost halfway to its completion, I could hardly do anything to change its basic systems design. From the start, the project was designed to be a client-server system, meaning that it was systems based and not browser based. Fortunately, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) technology was already available at that time, and I was able to upgrade the system from a purely textual interface using the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) into the more visual GUI look and feel.
To some extent, I would say that I succeeded in making the system browser based to some degree, because the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) was already available at that time. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) was also emerging at that time, and somehow, we were able to incorporate some XML features into the system. It might have looked good at that time, considering what we have to work with, but its look and feel would hardly come close to the new multimedia features of the new interfaces now that are purely browser based.
Setting aside the technical aspects of this subject matter, there is really a need now to either revive or strengthen the NCIS, so that the Five Pillars of Justice could again use it, the Five Pillars being law enforcement (police), prosecution (fiscals), judgement (the courts), rehabilitation (corrections) and community (pardon and parole).
Perhaps due to the gargantuan task that was given to us at that time, the system was designed only to cover the so-called “index crimes”. This was a technicality that the implementing laws prescribed, and we had to design the data fields in order to meet these limitations. Moving up ahead to the present times, it is now possible to include all kinds of crimes into a revived system, including perhaps environmental crimes and cyber crimes for instance.
The most difficult part of our challenge at that time was to create a single identity number for persons that are entered into the database, from the time that he or she is arrested, to the time that he is released as the case may be, because some convicts are sentenced to life imprisonment. The system required us to be able to track the same person as he or she moves from one Pillar to another, regardless of how many cases he has, as the case may be. In other words, it was both a case monitoring system and a person monitoring system, rolled into one.
Today, we could only watch movies and television and admire with envy how the law enforcement officers of other countries are using databases to identify criminals, not knowing that at one time in our history, we had a system that could do exactly what these foreign officers are doing.
From the time that the old NCIS died or weakened, the information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure in the Philippines has improved, and has in fact been strengthened. Notwithstanding the fact that the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) did not push through, there is still enough connectivity and bandwidth in this country to support and sustain a revived and improved NCIS. I say this because if we were able to build the old NCIS by using only copper leased lines and ordinary copper dial up connections, we could even so much more now, with fiber optic and broadband connections that are more available now, considering both wireless and wired connectivity solutions.
Looking back, I would say that the challenge of building and sustaining a crime information system is not so much on the technology side, but more on the policy side, meaning to say the policy framework that would require and compel all the component agencies of the Five Pillars to contribute data to the system by using it, or to go direct to the point, to faithfully and regularly use the system.
It could be said that the old NCIS system might have died or might have weakened due to the graft and corruption in the government in the past administrations. To go direct to the point, there was an apparent conflict of interest between the supposed users of the system, and the system itself. The computerized system promoted transparency and removed personal discretion in most of the operational procedures. As we all know too well, it is the lack of transparency and the existence of discretion that enables graft and corruption to prosper and survive.
In other words, the problem of computerization in the Five Pillars is not really on the side of hardware and software, but on the side of the manpower, the people in front of the machines that are supposed to use it, but would not use it, because it conflicts with their own interests, and with their own old ways of doing things. At the risk of sounding too redundant, the problem is not technical, it is political.
Under the new administration of President Benigno Aquino however, we now stand a better chance of implementing a revived NCIS, with a new atmosphere of transparency, accompanied by a firm resolve to defeat and remove graft and corruption in the entire government.
Of course, machines could not do everything, and they could only do what we want them to do. However, machines are proven to be good tools of productivity, and they are guaranteed to perform, as long as the people who are supposed to use them properly are also determined to perform properly as they should. If only we could make the people work, we could make the machines work.
I also recall that during that time, our government officials had apprehensions about using the internet for the supposedly super secure work of crime monitoring and crime reporting. This apprehension could still be valid even up to now, but since then, the technologies for securing data over the internet has also improved. All told, I think that the bottom line of this issue is the economics of it, because the system could also be operated outside the internet, using secure and dedicated connections.
I have dealt with the challenge of data security from the time that I was head of global information and communications for the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and until now, for my consulting clients. Way back then and until now, I still say that everything is hack-able, but a secure system can make it more difficult for hackers to crack, and the challenge to them is to crack it as fast as possible and as cheaply as possible.
Setting aside the issue of having bragging rights, most hackers are discouraged if the system takes too much time or takes too much money to crack. In theory, the objective of hackers is to be able to crack the system as quickly as possible, so that the information is still current and usable by the time that they crack it. Aside from that, the value of the information that they could get from hacking should be greater than what it would cost them to hack it. This observation does not apply to spies and other enemies of the State who may be determined to crack our codes no matter how much time it takes, and no matter how much money it would cost.
Due to budgetary constraints, most government agencies would only invest in software for data security, and not on hardware for the same. In my experience, the most secure systems are those that would combine both software and hardware for data security, without sacrificing one or the other. I tried to implement this combination for the old NCIS, but I was also limited by the allowed budgets.
Notwithstanding all the possible problems that I have mentioned, I still say that the government could easily revive the NCIS if it gathers the political will to do so. I also say that it has to match the will of criminals to do wrong for their own gain. In the same manner that criminal elements have already become “high-tech” in the way that they commit crime, it is about time that the government should become even more “high-tech” than them, starting with computerized databases.
During the time when I implemented the old NCIS, the technologies for “command and control” were not yet as mature as they are now. It might have been a good idea to put up a “command and control” center to back up the old NCIS, but we could not do that at that time, considering that the budget given to us was only for the computerization of the operational aspects of the member agencies of the NCIS.
I caught up with the challenge of using “command and control” technologies when I became a computer consultant for the local government of Makati City. The Mayor at that time was Vice President Jejomar Binay, and it was he who recognized the need to integrate the communications infrastructure of all the law enforcement and public safety units of the city. Consequently, I became part of the team that conceptualized and established what is now known as the Command and Control Center (C3) of the city.
Before the Makati City C3 was established, each of the law enforcement and public safety units of the city had their own radio systems, and the Mayor had to carry several radio handsets that would connect him to the said units, namely the police department, the fire department, the public safety department, the city hospital, the ambulance services and the rescue teams. After the Makati City C3 was established, the Mayor only had one radio handset to carry, and he could even call the command center using any phone line.
I also recall that Vice President Binay decided not to use the 117 emergency number of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), because the 117 system charges callers for using the system. According to him, he felt that it was not morally right to charge people if they make emergency calls, because it was tantamount to taking advantage of their situation to earn fees for the service. That is the reason why Makati City eventually opted to establish its own 168 emergency number.
I believe that in the long run, the Philippines needs a single number for the whole country that will take free emergency calls, just like the 168 number of Makati City. It appears that the 117 system of the DILG was patterned after the 911 system of the United States, wherein callers are also charged for their calls through their phone bills. I believe that a C3 that is free to call is part of having universal access to safety, especially so in a country like ours where the majority of the people are apparently poor. Denying universal access to safety is not only immoral; it is also unfair and unjust to those who are financially deprived.
Looking back in retrospect, I could now say that it was really graft and corruption that either killed or immobilized the old NCIS database. As we now think about reviving that database, it is also now necessary for us to also address the graft and corruption that apparently still happens in many of the agencies that were part of the system before. I say this with the thoughts in mind that even if we revive the database by modernizing it; it will again die if the people who are supposed to use it are still corrupt.
Corruption is a problem that has been with mankind from the beginning of time, and it would be unrealistic to think that it will disappear from the face of the earth in the years to come. It would however be realistic to think that corruption could be minimized in some places where it could be reasonably controlled, and that includes agencies of government with clear disciplinary measures that are imposed to all of their officials and employees.
I recently co-founded HYHO Clubs International, an organization of students and young professionals who are guided by the motto of “Help Yourself, Help Others”. As a mass based organization of students and young professionals, HYHO is in a good position to support projects that will help improve the quality of life of government employees, so that there would be a lesser tendency on their part to succumb to the temptation of graft and corruption.
As an organization, HYHO is going to adopt the twelve “Basic Human Needs” (BHN) framework, a complete package that includes culture, education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, safety, shelter and water services. There are many ways to fight corruption, but one good way certainly is to deliver the BHN package to the uniformed and civilian employees of the Five Pillars of Justice. As the saying goes, “Do not tempt the mortals”.
The author is a broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, political economist and computer technologist. He was formerly Director General of the National Computer Center and Chairman of the National Crime Information System
By Ramon Ike Villareal Señeres, CESO, CSEE
I had the privilege of bringing the National Crime Information System (NCIS) to full completion. I was the Chairman of the NCIS, concurrent to my capacity as the Director General of the National Computer Center (NCC). In the structure of the government, the NCIS was organized as a Project Management Office (PMO) under the supervision of the NCC, with me acting as the Project Manager, but complemented with officers and staff who were detailed to the project from all of the agencies belonging to the Five Pillars of Justice.
I say that I only brought it to completion, because the NCIS was started during the term of President Corazon C. Aquino, and I completed it during the term of President Joseph E. Estrada. I think that it is very important to make this clarification, because there was a widespread public perception that the NCIS was a project of President Estrada, a wrong perception that led to some opposition to the project, seemingly due to political reasons.
Setting aside all political reasons, we do need a crime information system that should be national in nature, but local in character. Depending on who is saying it, it could be said that the old NCIS as I completed it is either dead or weakened, as the case may be. The fact is, some of its surviving components are still being used by the remaining stations that used it. If it is dead, there is a need to revive it. If it is weakened, there is a need to strengthen it.
Since I only took over a project that was almost halfway to its completion, I could hardly do anything to change its basic systems design. From the start, the project was designed to be a client-server system, meaning that it was systems based and not browser based. Fortunately, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) technology was already available at that time, and I was able to upgrade the system from a purely textual interface using the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) into the more visual GUI look and feel.
To some extent, I would say that I succeeded in making the system browser based to some degree, because the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) was already available at that time. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) was also emerging at that time, and somehow, we were able to incorporate some XML features into the system. It might have looked good at that time, considering what we have to work with, but its look and feel would hardly come close to the new multimedia features of the new interfaces now that are purely browser based.
Setting aside the technical aspects of this subject matter, there is really a need now to either revive or strengthen the NCIS, so that the Five Pillars of Justice could again use it, the Five Pillars being law enforcement (police), prosecution (fiscals), judgement (the courts), rehabilitation (corrections) and community (pardon and parole).
Perhaps due to the gargantuan task that was given to us at that time, the system was designed only to cover the so-called “index crimes”. This was a technicality that the implementing laws prescribed, and we had to design the data fields in order to meet these limitations. Moving up ahead to the present times, it is now possible to include all kinds of crimes into a revived system, including perhaps environmental crimes and cyber crimes for instance.
The most difficult part of our challenge at that time was to create a single identity number for persons that are entered into the database, from the time that he or she is arrested, to the time that he is released as the case may be, because some convicts are sentenced to life imprisonment. The system required us to be able to track the same person as he or she moves from one Pillar to another, regardless of how many cases he has, as the case may be. In other words, it was both a case monitoring system and a person monitoring system, rolled into one.
Today, we could only watch movies and television and admire with envy how the law enforcement officers of other countries are using databases to identify criminals, not knowing that at one time in our history, we had a system that could do exactly what these foreign officers are doing.
From the time that the old NCIS died or weakened, the information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure in the Philippines has improved, and has in fact been strengthened. Notwithstanding the fact that the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) did not push through, there is still enough connectivity and bandwidth in this country to support and sustain a revived and improved NCIS. I say this because if we were able to build the old NCIS by using only copper leased lines and ordinary copper dial up connections, we could even so much more now, with fiber optic and broadband connections that are more available now, considering both wireless and wired connectivity solutions.
Looking back, I would say that the challenge of building and sustaining a crime information system is not so much on the technology side, but more on the policy side, meaning to say the policy framework that would require and compel all the component agencies of the Five Pillars to contribute data to the system by using it, or to go direct to the point, to faithfully and regularly use the system.
It could be said that the old NCIS system might have died or might have weakened due to the graft and corruption in the government in the past administrations. To go direct to the point, there was an apparent conflict of interest between the supposed users of the system, and the system itself. The computerized system promoted transparency and removed personal discretion in most of the operational procedures. As we all know too well, it is the lack of transparency and the existence of discretion that enables graft and corruption to prosper and survive.
In other words, the problem of computerization in the Five Pillars is not really on the side of hardware and software, but on the side of the manpower, the people in front of the machines that are supposed to use it, but would not use it, because it conflicts with their own interests, and with their own old ways of doing things. At the risk of sounding too redundant, the problem is not technical, it is political.
Under the new administration of President Benigno Aquino however, we now stand a better chance of implementing a revived NCIS, with a new atmosphere of transparency, accompanied by a firm resolve to defeat and remove graft and corruption in the entire government.
Of course, machines could not do everything, and they could only do what we want them to do. However, machines are proven to be good tools of productivity, and they are guaranteed to perform, as long as the people who are supposed to use them properly are also determined to perform properly as they should. If only we could make the people work, we could make the machines work.
I also recall that during that time, our government officials had apprehensions about using the internet for the supposedly super secure work of crime monitoring and crime reporting. This apprehension could still be valid even up to now, but since then, the technologies for securing data over the internet has also improved. All told, I think that the bottom line of this issue is the economics of it, because the system could also be operated outside the internet, using secure and dedicated connections.
I have dealt with the challenge of data security from the time that I was head of global information and communications for the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and until now, for my consulting clients. Way back then and until now, I still say that everything is hack-able, but a secure system can make it more difficult for hackers to crack, and the challenge to them is to crack it as fast as possible and as cheaply as possible.
Setting aside the issue of having bragging rights, most hackers are discouraged if the system takes too much time or takes too much money to crack. In theory, the objective of hackers is to be able to crack the system as quickly as possible, so that the information is still current and usable by the time that they crack it. Aside from that, the value of the information that they could get from hacking should be greater than what it would cost them to hack it. This observation does not apply to spies and other enemies of the State who may be determined to crack our codes no matter how much time it takes, and no matter how much money it would cost.
Due to budgetary constraints, most government agencies would only invest in software for data security, and not on hardware for the same. In my experience, the most secure systems are those that would combine both software and hardware for data security, without sacrificing one or the other. I tried to implement this combination for the old NCIS, but I was also limited by the allowed budgets.
Notwithstanding all the possible problems that I have mentioned, I still say that the government could easily revive the NCIS if it gathers the political will to do so. I also say that it has to match the will of criminals to do wrong for their own gain. In the same manner that criminal elements have already become “high-tech” in the way that they commit crime, it is about time that the government should become even more “high-tech” than them, starting with computerized databases.
During the time when I implemented the old NCIS, the technologies for “command and control” were not yet as mature as they are now. It might have been a good idea to put up a “command and control” center to back up the old NCIS, but we could not do that at that time, considering that the budget given to us was only for the computerization of the operational aspects of the member agencies of the NCIS.
I caught up with the challenge of using “command and control” technologies when I became a computer consultant for the local government of Makati City. The Mayor at that time was Vice President Jejomar Binay, and it was he who recognized the need to integrate the communications infrastructure of all the law enforcement and public safety units of the city. Consequently, I became part of the team that conceptualized and established what is now known as the Command and Control Center (C3) of the city.
Before the Makati City C3 was established, each of the law enforcement and public safety units of the city had their own radio systems, and the Mayor had to carry several radio handsets that would connect him to the said units, namely the police department, the fire department, the public safety department, the city hospital, the ambulance services and the rescue teams. After the Makati City C3 was established, the Mayor only had one radio handset to carry, and he could even call the command center using any phone line.
I also recall that Vice President Binay decided not to use the 117 emergency number of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), because the 117 system charges callers for using the system. According to him, he felt that it was not morally right to charge people if they make emergency calls, because it was tantamount to taking advantage of their situation to earn fees for the service. That is the reason why Makati City eventually opted to establish its own 168 emergency number.
I believe that in the long run, the Philippines needs a single number for the whole country that will take free emergency calls, just like the 168 number of Makati City. It appears that the 117 system of the DILG was patterned after the 911 system of the United States, wherein callers are also charged for their calls through their phone bills. I believe that a C3 that is free to call is part of having universal access to safety, especially so in a country like ours where the majority of the people are apparently poor. Denying universal access to safety is not only immoral; it is also unfair and unjust to those who are financially deprived.
Looking back in retrospect, I could now say that it was really graft and corruption that either killed or immobilized the old NCIS database. As we now think about reviving that database, it is also now necessary for us to also address the graft and corruption that apparently still happens in many of the agencies that were part of the system before. I say this with the thoughts in mind that even if we revive the database by modernizing it; it will again die if the people who are supposed to use it are still corrupt.
Corruption is a problem that has been with mankind from the beginning of time, and it would be unrealistic to think that it will disappear from the face of the earth in the years to come. It would however be realistic to think that corruption could be minimized in some places where it could be reasonably controlled, and that includes agencies of government with clear disciplinary measures that are imposed to all of their officials and employees.
I recently co-founded HYHO Clubs International, an organization of students and young professionals who are guided by the motto of “Help Yourself, Help Others”. As a mass based organization of students and young professionals, HYHO is in a good position to support projects that will help improve the quality of life of government employees, so that there would be a lesser tendency on their part to succumb to the temptation of graft and corruption.
As an organization, HYHO is going to adopt the twelve “Basic Human Needs” (BHN) framework, a complete package that includes culture, education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, safety, shelter and water services. There are many ways to fight corruption, but one good way certainly is to deliver the BHN package to the uniformed and civilian employees of the Five Pillars of Justice. As the saying goes, “Do not tempt the mortals”.
The author is a broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, political economist and computer technologist. He was formerly Director General of the National Computer Center and Chairman of the National Crime Information System
posted by Ike Señeres at 6:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home