It shall be the duty of the department:

(a) To collect data necessary for the work of the department from all persons and agencies mentioned in Section 13020 and from any other appropriate source.

(b) To prepare and distribute to all those persons and agencies cards, forms, or electronic means used in reporting data to the department. The cards, forms, or electronic means may, in addition to other items, include items of information needed by federal bureaus or departments engaged in the development of national and uniform criminal statistics.

(c) To recommend the form and content of records that must be kept by those persons and agencies in order to ensure the correct reporting of data to the department.

(d) To instruct those persons and agencies in the installation, maintenance, and use of those records and in the reporting of data therefrom to the department.

(e) To process, tabulate, analyze, and interpret the data collected from those persons and agencies.

(f) To supply, at their request, to federal bureaus or departments engaged in the collection of national criminal statistics data they need from this state.

(g) To make available to the public, through the department’s OpenJustice Web portal, information relating to criminal statistics, to be updated at least once per year, and to present at other times as the Attorney General may approve reports on special aspects of criminal statistics. A sufficient number of copies of a downloadable summary of this information shall be annually prepared to enable the Attorney General to send a copy to the Governor and to all public officials in the state dealing with criminals and to distribute them generally in channels where they will add to the public enlightenment. This subdivision shall not be construed to require more frequent reporting by local agencies than what is required by any other law.

(h) To periodically review the requirements of units of government using criminal justice statistics, and to make recommendations for changes it deems necessary in the design of criminal justice statistics systems, including new techniques of collection and processing made possible by automation.

(i) To evaluate, on an annual basis, the progress of California’s transition from summary crime reporting to incident-based crime reporting, in alignment with the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System, and report its findings to the Legislature annually through 2019, pursuant to Section 9795 of the Government Code.

(Amended by Stats. 2016, Ch. 418, Sec. 5. (AB 2524) Effective January 1, 2017.)