It is recommended that the Mayor and City Commission of the City of Miami Beach, Florida, authorize the issuance of Request for Proposal (RFP) 2022-450-KB for an open-source intelligence aggregator and processing platform for the Police Department. The RFP seeks proposals from qualified firms to gather data from social media, news sources, and the internet to allow the Police Department to stay informed and better prepare for potential community impacts. 

An open-source intelligence (OSINT) is referred to as a tool to gather data from such sources as social media, news sources, and the internet in general that allows public safety agencies to stay informed and better prepare for potential community impacts.

The expectation surrounding the City's capabilities to effectively investigate suspects, review data associated with criminal acts within the digital landscape, and ultimately identify, analyze, and submit evidence from digital sources for forensic use has increased directly with society's ever-increasing immersion into the digital frontier. In addition to law enforcement sensitive information gathered via dedicated law enforcement platforms, the department requires publicly available electronic information across social media, the open web, the clear web, the deep web, and breaches from the dark web. Detectives and analysts who provide support during investigations currently carry out multiple time-consuming, individual searches across numerous platforms and websites to find critical investigative leads and information. 

More than 90% of the world's data has been created in the last two years. Every two years, the volume of data worldwide doubles in size. OSINT tools, which alleviate the City from mounting demands for manual review by City personnel of vast amounts of data, are critical to the City's ability to continue baseline services.

The attached RFP seeks a secure, verified, effective, and efficient social media, public records, and information search platform. The platform shall save time and provide accurate and broad information on individuals of interest as part of investigations, fraud detection and prevention, identity verification, risk assessment, and legislative compliance.

The platform selected shall have tools that improve efficiency and accuracy and serve as force multipliers for investigative efforts that currently take considerable time and effort. Information provided by Proposers should only cover tools that leverage the use of open-source information that is compliant with applicable laws and copyrights. Proposers should have significant experience with configuring their solutions for use in law enforcement.

Proposals received will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria established in the RFP. 

It is not anticipated that grant funding will be utilized for this project. 

I recommend that the Mayor and Commission of the City of Miami Beach, Florida authorize the issuance of Request for Proposal (RFP) 2022-450-KB for an open-source intelligence (OSINT) aggregator and processing platform.