Texas Department of Public Safety

The Texas Department of Public Safety entered into a five-year contract for the LexisNexis Accurint Virtual Crime Center on May 10, 2022, confirmed through Texas SmartBuy — the state’s procurement transparency portal. DPS is Texas’s statewide law enforcement agency, overseeing the Texas Highway Patrol, Texas Rangers, Criminal Investigations Division, and the Texas Fusion Center.

A DPS AVCC contract is significant beyond the agency itself. When a state-level law enforcement agency holds an AVCC contract, it frequently functions as a gateway for smaller agencies — allowing city and county departments to access or contribute through the state contract vehicle rather than negotiating individual agreements with LexisNexis. Whether Texas DPS’s five-year AVCC contract is a standalone investigative subscription or a consortium vehicle through which other Texas agencies participate is an open question.

Texas has no sanctuary policies. DPS manages the Texas Fusion Center in Austin, which aggregates intelligence from hundreds of local agencies. Whether that intelligence flows into PSDEX as part of DPS’s AVCC arrangement would be material to understanding the full scope of the contract.