10
Data Fusion and Analytics for Chief Investigators, 2022 Survey Report
Data Sources Used in Investigations
The majority of data being used for investigations by governmental organizations is unstructured text,
including cyber data (49%) and criminal records (44%).
On average, organizations have only five data sources available for their investigations. There is a growing
need for extracting metadata and entities from unstructured text, which is in many cases a primary data
source. This is especially true when you consider that most organizations only have a few data sources to
pull information from, and so need to get as much value as possible from these sources.
Figure 3: Top Data Sources Typically Used for
Investigations
Figure 4: Number of Data Sources Available for
Investigations
*Question in figure 3 allowed more than one answer and as a result, percentages will add up to more than 100%
49%
44%
37%
36%
35%
34%
18%
12%
11%
10%
Cyber data
Criminal records
Travel records
Location records
Financial records
Communications records
Video feed
Population records
Vehicle licensing records
Social media records
53%
28%
15%
4%
2-4 5-7 8-10 More than 10
Weighted average: 5 data sources