Clue has become the go-to Case Management tool for investigation professionals. We always liked that it’s dedicated to managing intelligence and investigations. It has a thought-out workflow that isn’t the ‘one size fits all’ of a standard Case Management system.

S-branch has always focussed on the data analysis piece of the puzzle. So we were delighted to see the addition of the Clue Analytics Connector.

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What is it?

A ready-made connector that allows quick exports from Clue to Power Query for advanced reporting and data analysis. Power Query is built in both Excel and Power BI, both of which are available to any business with a Microsoft 365 account.

The connector allows easy access to pull data via the API from Clue into Power Query, without the need for expertise in APIs, JSON, or programming.

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What can it do for me?

A lot! If we’re talking Excel, it can be used to pull out a Registers data, or a Register’s linked data for external analysis. It can be great for performing additional analysis, calculations or even duplicate detection.

When used with PowerBI, the data within Clue can be used to produce powerful dashboards. Using Clue data in this way allows Analysts to visualise and share insights from the Clue with other interested parties. It also allows drill-down analysis of a Register and its linked Registers.

What’s more, Clue provides ready-made templates that utilise Power Query to export data for use in Power BI and Excel.

The connector allows easy access to pull data via the API from Clue into Power Query, without the need for expertise in APIs, JSON, or programming.

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Tell me more about the Excel Templates!

Well, there is a standard empty template that comes with all the Power Query functions you need to pull data out of a desired Register. There is also a Duplicate Checker that will work with any Clue implementation. This will pull data out from POLE-style registers (People, Objects, Locations and Events) and look for duplicates between the data using fuzzy matching.

Finally, there is the DVLA checker, which goes through the Vehicle Register picking out Vehicle Registration Numbers and returning the DVLA information about that vehicle. We see this as an excellent example of how the Clue Analytics Connector can be used to collaborate Clue data with other sources (Companies House comes to mind).

New templates are also being added all the time, which is great to see.

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Okay, what about the Power BI Templates?

For S-branch, this is where it gets exciting. We’ve always been fans of Power BI. Again, there is a standard empty template, which allows data from multiple Registers to be extracted and then linked together using the Power BI model view. As for pre-configured templates, there is a great user management template, which allows administrators to easily see when a user last logged in, what teams they belong to and even the last record they added/updated. This isn’t a full audit log but it’s great for giving management an idea of how users are using the system.

There are also some great Register templates. The Incident template not only gives great insight into the Incident itself, but it also reports on how many days pass until a Task, Event or Investigation is created from the Incident. Great for management reporting.

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In Conclusion

The Clue Analytics Connector is a great addition to Clue and a real asset for teams who want to get the most out of their Clue Implementation. There is a growing community using the Connector and a great knowledge base that is constantly evolving. The flexible nature of using Power Query means that feedback can be considered quickly. It also gives customers a great opportunity to be part of the design piece, as feedback on these templates can be channeled to the product eventually.

If you think this would be a useful addition to your Clue implementation or you are looking at purchasing Clue, please contact the Clue team who will be able to help you. Likewise, if you are looking into Data Analysis tools in general, or would like Consultancy on either Clue or PowerBI, please contact S-branch here.

The best thing about S-branch is our customers. Without exception, all our customers are using data to disrupt or prevent Crime or Fraud. TRAFFIC is one example, working to counter trade in wild animals and plants in the context of both biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

In 2021 TRAFFIC initiated a project to identify potential instances of corruption in the timber sector, specifically at the point where politically exposed persons (PEPs) allocate companies the rights to harvest wood. The end goal is to use this data to provide credible evidence to financial institutions, encouraging them to investigate further and take action where needed. TRAFFIC’s project was funded under a larger project: Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC).

The Method

TRAFFIC has access to several different analytical tools and databases. They also have a talented team from a variety of different backgrounds. S-branch was involved early in the process, initially to review TRAFFIC’s method and how they planned to utilise technology. There was an appetite to use technology that TRAFFIC had previously invested in, although a few new tools were added to the arsenal!

Data Collection

Once the country of interest had been selected, the data collection itself was managed by TRAFFIC. There is a wealth of online published information around forestry concessions usually published by the government themselves. Likewise, there is a good amount of information around Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), sometimes including their family members.

In some cases, TRAFFIC could download the information directly. In other cases, TRAFFIC used ParseHub to scrape data that couldn’t easily be downloaded.

Data Processing

The data collected was varied in its format. While not huge in size it was no small task to coerce this data into a standard format for analysis. This is usually the difficult, time consuming and less glamorous side of analysing data.

There were several challenges with standardising the data, including inconsistencies with the use of accents on names. There was also the need to identify similar people or company names. TRAFFIC managed these tasks in house with data management and occasionally some code. Although the initial analysis was done Excel, TRAFFIC and S-branch eventually moved the data to an analysis database (i2 iBase) to allow patterns in the data to be explored.

Identifying Persons of Interest (i2)

The initial stage was to identify forestry owners and PEPs with similar names that lived in the same region.TRAFFIC has been using i2 Analyst’s Notebook and i2 iBase for several years. S-branch decided to utilise these tools to identify Persons of Interest for further analysis. i2’s ability to display network visualisations alongside geospatial data made it the perfect tool for this.

People with very similar names in the same town were marked in red, while those in a similar region were marked in orange.

Data Enrichment (Videris)

The People of Interest were then investigated further using basic OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) techniques. TRAFFIC and S-branch also utilised Videris, an OSINT tool that assists in collecting, analysing and visualising open-source data.

On more than one occasion Videris identified social media accounts or news articles that had not been found on the manual OSINT searches. For this reason, we found Videris invaluable for the enrichment stage.

Briefing (i2)

The results of the data enrichment were collected to brief the internal teams. These briefing charts could eventually be passed to financial institutions, to encourage them to investigate further.

Here i2 Analyst’s Notebook was the obvious choice for producing clear and concise briefing content. i2 is widely regarded as the standard for charting which means anything TRAFFIC has made can easily be passed to law enforcement or financial institutions who more than likely already use i2.

High-Level Analysis (Power BI)

There was an appetite to look at the data from ‘the top down’. This analysis would identify patterns and statistical trends. This data would be useful to both the TRAFFIC analysis team and their managers and stakeholders. It would also need to be in a format that is easy to consume, easy to share and didn’t require any specific analysis tools to view.

TRAFFIC are already users of Power BI. This meant that using just a browser, the TRAFFIC team could access interactive dashboards exploring data about PEPs and forestry concession owners. The visualisation below explores the information known about PEPs.

Summary

The TNRC project proves that it is not one person or piece of technology that makes a project successful. It’s a collaboration of talented people and technology that used well can yield good results.

TRAFFIC already had access to several different analytical tools and databases. They also have a talented team from a variety of different backgrounds. TRAFFIC’s talent was combined with S-branch’s experience in analysing fraud and crime data, using a variety of different tools and technology.

To find out more about the TNRC project, please see TRAFFIC’s blog here. If you are looking at running a similar project and are looking at analysis tools to assist you, please contact S-branch for more information.

For more information on TRAFFIC visit their website. If you’d like to find out more about the products mentioned in this blog, please contact S-branch

PowerBI and Clue – Take your analysis to a new level

We are huge fans of PowerBI here at S-branch. If we ever need to get a ‘lie of the land’ with a new set of data, then it’s our go-to tool. Likewise, we’ve utilised data held within analysis databases using PowerBI before, an example can be found here.

One tool that we were keen to try PowerBI on was Clue. Clue is an investigation case management and intelligence platform that enables organisations to build intelligence and quickly manage and progress investigations. We instantly liked Clue. It’s refreshing to see technology that is designed specifically for Investigations. Too often we see people managing investigations using tools not fit for the job. This leads to workarounds and compromises – Not with Clue!

Being a modern application, Clue has its own API (Application Programming Interface). It is with this API that we interrogated the data within Clue using PowerBI.

Clue’s API

Clue’s API documentation can be found on their support site. We found it to be concise and helpful. We were quickly making API calls using the Postman API Platform to test our requests. There are security measures in place that need to be set up before you start using the API, again this was all documented on the support site.

Making Clue data available using Power BI

Clue has a great article about Power BI on their support site, with examples using Power Query. Utilising Power Query meant we could perform additional basic transformations (such as splitting out date/time fields) on the data too.

The Dashboards

On our test Clue site, we only have a limited amount of data. For this reason, we chose to focus on the Intelligence register.

In the dashboard above, we bring together temporal (time), network and statistical analysis in one place. We can drill down into the data using any one of these analysis types, using interactive visualisations.

• The bottom left shows statistics on the intelligence grading (3x5x2) in accordance with the National Intelligence Model
• The date of the Intelligence can be interrogated either using a slider or by clicking on a specific time period (in this case a month)
• The network visualisation can be used to spot commonalities between the intelligence records. The green dots show people that have more than one intelligence record linked to them. This method of visualisation proved quite performant, we tested it against some of our other datasets with 10’s of thousands of records and the results were impressive
• A filter on the network visualisation allows us the ability to focus on the elements that are important to us
• The righthand side analyses the linked Outcomes, Decisions, Tasks and Events linked to the intelligence.

It’s important to mention at this point that Clue does have its own dashboard and network analysis capability. PowerBI builds on this ability by having all this information in one place with an interactive dashboard.

Clue is used to tackle threats including counter economic crime, cybercrime, organised crime, corruption, counter-terrorism, environmental crime, human trafficking, counter extremism, drug crime, sexual and violent crime, and hate crime.

If any of the above could benefit you or you’re looking into data analysis tools in general; please feel free to contact us. For more information on Clue, please visit their website