State Spending Focus: California Adopting Law Enforcement Technology

Gone are the days when police officers and detectives solve crimes by pinning images of suspects on a corkboard and connecting the dots with string and pushpins. Nowadays, investigators leverage data, digital information, and technology to solve crimes.

California government agencies are some of the earliest adopters of law enforcement technology. These law enforcement tech contracts – along with plenty of other government technology opportunities – are excellent ways for businesses to get started selling to the government in California.

California Leads in Law Enforcement Data Sharing

Law enforcement agencies in California have worked for nearly two decades on sharing data and information among agencies. In the early 2000s, agencies began to share data regionally, until the Data Sharing Task Force formed in 2008. That year, the California Emergency Management Agency spent $4 million on statewide licenses for IBM’s COPLINK.

COPLINK is a tactical information-sharing system for investigative lead generation and analysis in the area of crime investigation. The system gathers data to develop context such as relationships among people, places, and things surrounding an investigation. COPLINK enables seamless integration of operational investigative data for use by law enforcement, and the system complements other technologies already in place at departments.

The GovWin IQ market intelligence platform has tracked a large number of agencies buying into this trend. That includes agencies in California like Santa Clara County. The county recently signed an agreement that extends through 2019 in February to integrate COPLINK.

In 2010, the Santa Clara County Director of Emergency Services signed an agreement to install and maintain COPLINK through 2013 for $2.6 million. Since then the Sheriff’s Office has taken over an approved eight additional COPLINK-related agreements with IBM.

The agreement has pushed forward information-sharing efforts throughout the region such as supporting the South Bay Information Sharing System (SBISS) integration of new records management systems and data from the cities of Mountain View, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. Mountain View has already started data integration testing efforts, followed by Palo Alto and Los Altos. The agreement stretches through 2019, and should provide enough time to complete the project.

Within and outside of California, opportunities to provide technology for other law enforcement and emergency response government functions are widely available, as this free and informative on-demand webinar from Deltek, IHS Markit, and iCert explains.

Other Examples of California Agencies Investing in Technology

Being in the center of the IT world, municipalities and federal agencies based in the Golden State are investing in technology more than many other local governments across the country.

Investments in government technology (sometimes known as GovTech) have been a major focus area for California agencies. In fact, the GovWin IQ platform identified more than 1,500 open opportunities in the state of California containing Smart Tags of information technology products and/or services.

Here are some examples from the last several months of California agencies investing in technology for needs outside of law enforcement, recently captured by GovWin IQ:

1. Ventura County in California has released an RFP for qualified vendors to provide a land management software system, including software, implementation services, and ongoing maintenance support.
2. The US Department of Commerce, Patent and Trademark Office branch based in San Jose has an ongoing requirement for vendors to provide a wide range of information technology support services.

You can find more federal, state, local, and education government contracts like these when you request a free trial of GovWin IQ, the leading provider of market intelligence that empowers you and your team to grow your public sector sales.

If your firm is specifically looking to find contracts in California, it can utilize our free playbook, How to do Business with the Government in California, to get the insight it needs to grow its state government sales or go after its first state government contract.