Deltek pulse: Justice/public safety and homeland security January review

The most common terms appearing in justice/public safety and homeland security solicitations during January were camera/surveillance, fire alarm and radio. The below word cloud provides a visual interpretation of key-term frequency.

• Number of public safety bids: 1,057
• Top three states (by number of solicitations released): California (13), Virginia (58) and Texas (57)
• Keywords: camera/surveillance, fire alarm and radio

Frequency of terms

• Surveillance: 23 (eight state; 15 local)
• Radio: 11 (one state; 10 local)
• 911: 6 (one state; five local)

The below graph provices information on the break-down of the types of entities purchasing justice and public safety technologies.

Trends

• States have begun focusing on broadband projects recently, though, unlike Minnesota which awarded its FirstNet project, few are ready to commit to a course of action at this point. Florida released an RFI for its FirstNet project in late December and it is likely that other interested entities will begin the process through RFIs or consulting projects.
• Several 911 projects moved forward in the final months of the year, including South Dakota’s release of a solicitation for an ESInet and Pueblo County, Colorado’s awarding of its project for NG911 CPE.

Notable projects

• The state of New Hampshire released a request for proposals for Computerized Criminal History AKA Criminal History Record Information and Sex Offender Registry Requirements Documentation. The consultant hired through this project will help to develop the technical requirements for a solicitation to purchase these systems.
• Texas released a solicitation for an Automated Fingerprint Identification System and Mobile Identification Maintenance Services. These systems serve as the primary resource for providing AFIS to Texas law enforcement agencies and non-criminal justice practitioners.
• On January 24^th the Pennsylvania State Police released a solicitation for a National Public Safety Broadband Network Planner.  This consultant will help the state determine how to move forward with the implementation of this project and will help the state to coordinate with FirstNet.

Analyst’s Take

Despite the significant drop-off in the number of projects released in December compared to November, the number barely rose in January. Only five additional solicitations were released in January for JPS projects over December.  These projects ran the gamut of technologies from solicitations being released for a mass notification system in Nebraska to Montana’s RFP for an offender tracking system. The singular trend from the month was that of entities continuing to cancel their need for projects, or, in many respects, their need to go out to bid for projects.  These too, however, varied significantly in both location and technology. Kentucky, for instance, made the decision to build out its long awaited court case management and e-filing projects in-house.  New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority determined that it will be moving forward with a pilot project for its bus camera security system project.  The participants in the pilot project were chosen from the RFI respondents and those successfully completing the pilot project will be awarded contracts without a formal solicitation being released.  Funding also continued to hamper many projects and continues to be one of the leading causes of project cancelations.  It remains to be seen whether the large number of canceled projects that has been seen over the last few months will continue, however, vendors are encouraged to seek information about all of the ways entities are considering fulfilling their needs, including whether they may complete the project in-house.  Vendors should also pay special attention to projects that have been on the books for a long time without having ever secured sufficient funding. The longer a project goes un-funded either through successful grant applications or city or county budgets, the less likely it is that it will ever be completed.

GovWin IQ subscribers can read further about these projects in the provided links. Non-subscribers can gain access with a GovWin IQ free trial.