DPS Leaders: AI Success Starts With Trusted Data, Clear Use Cases

At the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are becoming part of the agency’s operational planning — but the path from strategy to impact depends on clear use cases, trusted data and tools that can support real-time decisions.

DPS leaders laid out those ideas during a Texas Digital Government Summit* panel moderated by Jeff Martinez, vice president and general manager for U.S. and Canada public sector at Rackspace Technology. Martinez was joined by DPS CIO Jessica Ballew and Maj. Jodie B. Tullos of the agency’s IT Division for a discussion on how agencies can move from AI strategy to measurable results.

The panel used last year’s Kerr County flooding as a case study in the operational challenges that can emerge during a large public safety response, including communications gaps, fragmented data, cross-agency coordination and the need to turn information into actionable insight quickly.

Ballew said DPS' mission is to protect and serve Texans across a wide range of functions, including highway patrol, criminal investigations, the Texas Rangers, the state crime lab, driver licensing and other licensing operations. As the agency’s CIO, she said her primary responsibility is ensuring that department personnel and partner organizations have the information they need when they need it.

“Our systems are critical, 24/7 systems that can't go down,” Ballew said. “And in addition to just being able to run a query like the old days, you know, there's so many different pieces of information to tap into that can truly change a life or the outcome of a serious incident or event, and so we want to make sure that they have the technology, tools, the ability to connect anytime, anywhere, so that we maintain operability and interoperability, and then the data is actually actionable at the time they need it.”

Tullos said his role is to bridge the gap between the department’s IT operations and its frontline law enforcement divisions. That work includes helping ensure personnel have the hardware, software and other technology capabilities needed to fulfill the agency’s mission. He said law enforcement is often first on scene during emergencies, where personnel are working to preserve life and collect evidence at the same time.

Martinez framed the discussion around the need for public-sector organizations to move beyond strategy documents and into execution.

“Measurable impact is the key here,” Martinez said. “We’re going to focus on enablement, we’re going to focus on leadership approach and the resolve of teams to get the mission done.”

According to Ballew, the department had already been working to expand interoperability beyond radio communications and into data-driven coordination. One tool discussed during the panel was the Team Awareness Kit program for Texas, or Texas TAK, which helps agencies maintain shared situational awareness by showing the location of personnel and resources on a map. She said the department also used scalable messaging systems that can mimic radio traffic and support channels or talk groups when responders arrive with different radio systems or incompatible equipment.

Tullos said communications are often one of the largest challenges during emergencies, especially for smaller agencies with limited funding or equipment. During the Kerr County flooding response, damaged communications infrastructure and difficult terrain around river basin areas added to the challenge. He described platforms that could help unify communication and provide geospatial awareness, such as cellular providers, satellite communications and other partner-supported resources, as “paramount.”

“Being in law enforcement, even at local levels with small events, the initial need for operability is often a challenge, depending on the funding that a smaller agency may have to buy the equipment it needs,” Tullos said. “So operability, first and foremost, is often difficult for a lot of your smaller county and municipal agencies. Then you add the need for interoperability, for agencies to come together and work together, and that adds a greater bit of difficulty.”

The response also required coordination across a broad operating area. Martinez referenced the need to support resources across 127 river miles, while Tullos said agencies from across the country and personnel from Mexico participated in the response, creating additional language and equipment challenges.

Ballew described the response as requiring a more flexible governance model. Standard acquisition and review procedures were not built for the pace of an emergency, but the department still had to protect sensitive information and make sure technology decisions were not made without oversight. According to Ballew, operational leaders, cybersecurity personnel and technical experts worked together to assess tools, consider risks and make decisions under time pressure.

That balance between speed and governance became one of the panel’s central themes. Public safety agencies may need tools that can be reviewed and deployed quickly, but those tools still must account for cybersecurity, data integrity, operational risk and the consequences of using or not using a capability during an emergency.

Ballew said the department could not take an approach in which anyone could plug in any technology they wanted. At the same time, she said the agency had to operate in a nimble way and accept or manage certain risks in order to support the mission.

Data integration emerged as another focus of the discussion. Ballew said the response required information from multiple sources, including weather services, river authorities, other agencies and legacy systems. Some information had to be pulled from a mainframe and placed into spreadsheet files before it could be used.

She said the experience showed the importance of tools that can ingest different data sources and help identify patterns, even when the data has not gone through the kind of preparation process that would be expected in a planned technology project. In those situations, she said, subject matter experts remain essential because they can determine whether the information being surfaced makes sense.

“That's where you really have to rely heavily on the people and the subject matter experts, because you're going to get there a whole lot faster,” Ballew said. “When you've got those people, they're like spotters. If I'm the expert in water flow, I can tell when what it's saying doesn't look right. Then you go dig into that and figure out what needs to be corrected.”

Tullos noted that historical data alone would not have been enough because the topography and hydrology of the area changed after the flooding. Real-time data, historical information and subject matter expertise had to be combined to guide search and recovery patterns.

“We had to be able to ingest real-time and historical data and bring in the experts to help analyze it and make determinations about where our search and recovery patterns should be post-event or during the event,” Tullos said. “Because you can go out there today, if you’re familiar with that area, and it doesn’t look the same. If we were to depend upon just the older paper and historical data, it would have made the job much more difficult.”

The panel also pointed to changing expectations for technology partners. Ballew said the strongest partners are those who understand the agency’s mission, bring forward relevant use cases and share lessons from what has worked or failed elsewhere. She said those partners do not simply ask what the agency wants to buy, but assess what is happening and identify capabilities the department may be able to use.

Tullos said relationships with technology partners, operational personnel and IT staff are all important because ideas can come from any part of the organization. He said one person’s suggestion can lead to another idea and help guide the department toward a better solution.

The lessons from the flood response are already shaping how DPS approaches future technology projects. Ballew said the agency has been conducting market research and pursuing proof-of-technology projects tied to capabilities that could support future operations. She said some of the same needs may apply to major events such as FIFA-related activities, including drones, communications, shared situational awareness and resource tracking across multiple agencies.

Ballew said the event also changed how the department thinks about implementing new systems. Rather than trying to account for every possible requirement before moving forward, she said the department is now focused on starting with smaller use cases, proving the concept, piloting the tool, addressing problems and then expanding.

“What this taught us is we can start on a smaller scale,” Ballew said. “Let's pick a use case. Let's not try to build this for knowing there's a bunch of other use cases. Let's design it to be scalable, but we don't have to know every single use case, because we can modify it over time to accommodate new use cases as we identify them, so let's focus on the one that we have the capability to do now that's going to provide meaningful value back to the mission, and let's stand that up.”

*The Texas Digital Government Summit is hosted by Government Technology, the sister publication of Industry Insider — Texas. Both are part of e.Republic.