Case Study · State Government
CA Dept. of Justice
Stop Data Collection System
Delivering a statewide legislative mandate — translating AB 953 statutory requirements into a production system used by 80,000+ law enforcement officers across California.
80k+
LAW ENFORCEMENT USERS
AB953
LEGISLATIVE MANDATE
25
PERSON AGILE TEAM
3yrs
ENGAGEMENT DURATION
Client
California Department of Justice
Engagement
Jul 2019 – Sep 2022 · Dajani Consulting
Sector
Criminal Justice / Public Safety / State Government
Background
A Legislative Mandate With No Room for Ambiguity
California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act (AB 953) created a binding legal obligation for all law enforcement agencies statewide to collect and report detailed stop data — the circumstances, demographics, and outcomes of every officer-initiated stop. The California Department of Justice was tasked with building and operating the system that would make this possible at scale.
The Stop Data Collection System (SDCS) needed to serve over 80,000 law enforcement officers across hundreds of agencies — from large urban departments to small county sheriffs — through a single, compliant, statewide application. Requirements had to be derived directly from statute, not from stakeholder preference. There was no room for interpretation gaps between what the law required and what the system delivered.
“This wasn’t a typical enterprise application. Every data field, every workflow, every validation rule had a legal basis. My job was to make sure not one of them got lost between the statute and the system.”
The Challenge
Translating Statute Into System — at Statewide Scale
The complexity of this engagement went well beyond typical enterprise IT. Requirements had to satisfy three simultaneous constraints that were often in tension: statutory compliance with AB 953, operational usability for officers in the field entering data in real-time, and technical feasibility within the DOJ’s existing infrastructure and development capacity.
Additionally, UAT couldn’t simply validate functionality — it had to validate statutory compliance. Every test scenario needed to trace back to a specific legislative requirement. A production defect wasn’t just a software bug; it was a compliance failure with legal implications for the department.
My Approach
Requirements Traceability From Statute to Deployment
- Statutory requirements translation — Worked directly with DOJ legal and policy stakeholders to parse AB 953 and translate legislative language into precise, testable system requirements. Each requirement was documented with its statutory source, ensuring full traceability from law to BRD to code.
- Stakeholder facilitation across complex boundaries — Facilitated structured requirements sessions between DOJ legal counsel, IT architects, law enforcement agency representatives, and executive sponsors — each with different priorities and technical literacy levels. Translated policy into technical specifications and vice versa across every session.
- Use cases and user story development — Developed detailed use cases and user stories covering the full range of officer interactions — from initial stop entry to data submission, validation, and agency-level reporting — across devices and connectivity conditions in the field.
- Gap analysis and compliance validation — Conducted iterative gap analysis between current-state system capabilities and statutory requirements, producing prioritized solution options and impact assessments at each phase gate.
- End-to-end UAT leadership — Led all UAT planning and execution for the SDCS. Developed the full test strategy, authored UAT scripts traceable to each BRD requirement and statutory obligation, managed defect triage in JIRA, and facilitated stakeholder sign-off workshops with DOJ leadership and executive sponsors.
- Agile team liaison across a 25-person team — Served as the bridge between DOJ business stakeholders and a 25-person cross-functional Agile delivery team. Maintained the product backlog in Azure DevOps, facilitated sprint planning and retrospectives, and converted BRD artifacts into epics, features, and user stories with clearly defined acceptance criteria.