Case Summary

In an effort to better engage citizens in border protection, the State of Texas launched a "Virtual Border Watch" program to allow citizens to view live video feeds of the area and submit reports of suspicious activity.

Business Challenge

The State of Texas wanted to better protect the state's border with Mexico and improve crime prevention efforts through engaging citizen input from residents in the region.

Approach Taken

In November 2006, the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, a group of 20 sheriffs from the border region, launched a month-long "Texas Virtual Border Watch" website as a trial attempt to create a virtual community for border protection. The site allowed users, or "Virtual Texas Deputies," to view live streaming video feeds from cameras stationed throughout the border area and submit their own reports of suspicious activity.

The State launched a full-scale version of the program in November 2008 through a partnership between the Sheriff's Coalition and social networking company BlueServo, Inc. The new site allows users to feed video from their own video cameras into the Virtual Border Watch system. Granted $2 million for project by the State, the program aims to create a virtual "neighborhood watch" along the border consisting of the community and law enforcement offices. The sheriffs also hope to raise advertising revenue through a large number of hits to the site in order to defray expenses and rollout more cameras along the border.

The initiative was covered in Federal Computer Week..

Results Achieved

Results of the recent full-scale launch in November 2008 are not yet known.

During the month-long pilot of the site in 2006, there were 221,562 registered users of the site, 27,923,387 hits, and 14,800 reports of suspicious activity submitted.

Lessons Learned

More information to come.