Building an Investigative Information Sharing Environment

Building an Investigative Information Sharing Environment

Ken Clark, Chief Data Officer/Assistant Director, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), speaks with Robert Lutton, Vice President, Sandhill Consultants, about his career trajectory, key influences, and the data strategy implementation at ICE.

Clark first served as Director, Chief, and then Commander in the U.S. Air Force. He then served five years in The White House Communications Agency, followed by a decade in the private sector. He later joined the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

He explains that ICE was formed within the DHS in March 2003 as part of the Homeland Security Act in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The initiative brought in 20 different federal agencies and departments, merging the investigative and interior enforcement missions of the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

ICE is the largest investigative branch in the DHS with over 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel operating 400 offices in the United States and globally. With a budget of more than USD 8 billion, ICE’s mission is to protect the country. from cross-border crime and illegal immigration.

Clark notes that his background has played a role in guiding him to his current role. One of the most significant instances he mentions is the September 11 terrorist attacks where nearly 3,000 people were killed and more than 6,000 were injured. He shares that on the day of the attack, he was in President Bush’s Emergency Operations Center with the Vice President and the National Security Advisor. His responsibilities were to work communications for the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Transportation. “It gave me an opportunity to really see what happened at a national level and how information and data are essential for our national decision makers.”

While in the private sector, Clark had the opportunity to work with the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI). NSI is a joint collaborative effort by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement partners. “It gave me a chance to see how information and data need to be shared with state and local partners, and the importance of data sharing from all levels of government, state, local, and private sectors, and even with our foreign partners. That was a pivotal point in my career. It moved me from being in the aerospace operations-oriented areas to moving more toward Homeland Security,” he says.

As the CDO for ICE, Clark is responsible for data management, life cycle, and data strategy. ICE has started to build a roadmap for the focused implementation of various projects along with some of its policies and initiatives.

“Developing the strategy was very much a collaborative process across the entire program offices spectrum. It was also tied very closely to the ICE strategic plan that was recently released,” Clark explains. “We are working with the program offices, building a framework, and we're building what we call the ‘Investigative Information Sharing Environment,’ which is going to improve data sharing, focus, and coordinate processes and policies, and be very much operations-focused.”

The strategy was designed according to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

“We have an ICE data governance board which allows a collaborative discussion and coordination of the mission areas and the data strategy requirements. It's going to be a key part of our implementation plan as we develop our data strategy roadmap,” Clark says.

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