Operationalised Business Intelligence: Knowledge Sharing with an Enterprise Ambition at the Amsterdam-Amstelland Police Department

In this article we describe the operationalised Business Intelligence (BI) environment of the Amsterdam-Amstelland Police Department (AAPD) as it presented itself in the spring of 2007. We explicitly focus our attention on the organisational components that support the knowledge process flows required to align the usage of the operationalised BI instruments with their enterprise-wide goal to develop an "Intelligence Led Policing" capability. We illustrate how two specific organisational innovations - the Management Information and Research department and the Information Brokers acted as go-betweens for the various levels of the AAPD and the effective design and use of the informational systems. To make our study concrete, we highlight the use of the Early Warning System and Data Detective tool in support of their capacity management process for law enforcement activities. We conclude this descriptive case study with the key building blocks of this case, and we suggest that an enterprise-wide view and knowledge-based perspective be incorporated in future research on operationalised BI environments.