Officially launched in 2019, the HSI Innovation Lab is the agency’s centralized hub for the development of new advanced analytics capabilities, tools and enhanced business processes for HSI. The Innovation Lab strives to create a framework to drive the development of innovative solutions for the agency by taking a “field-first” approach to issues, allowing special agents and criminal analysts in the field to drive the development of these solutions and share insights and feedback with leadership.

The Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment (RAVEN) is the analytic platform powering the HSI Innovation Lab. HSI special agents and criminal analysts require the ability to quickly analyze large amounts of disparate data to support mission-critical and often time-sensitive investigations. Although HSI has an existing suite of analytic tools, they are limited in scope to specific datasets, and as a result, are not able to provide insights into potential linkages across critical investigative information. RAVEN’s capabilities will significantly decrease the time special agents and criminal analysts spend on manual data entry and analysis, allowing them to focus on other investigative activities and make better informed, data-driven decisions. Once fully deployed, RAVEN will allow users to import and analyze raw data, identify previously unknown linkages and quickly visualize connections among disparate data.