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NFIRS Vendor Development Procedures

The United States Fire Administration (USFA) no longer certifies vendor transaction files for the NFIRS 5.0. The USFA instead maintains a list of fire software vendors that have registered with the USFA to obtain NFIRS 5.0 development materials and the vendor validation tool. We will also maintain vendors' readiness status' on a list based on their reports to us on their status.

The procedure has 5 steps, outlined below.

Development Procedure for Active Vendor Status

  1. Vendors will register their company/organization and their software to receive a vendor ID and a software ID. This step is the same as in the previous certification procedure. All transaction files processed at the national level are required to have these two IDs embedded in the transaction file as specified in the design documentation.
  2. Vendors will be requested to develop software using the NFIRS 5.0 design documentation and then test their output transaction files using the validation tool the USFA provides for those purposes. NFIRS design documentation and other information may be downloaded from the Design Documentation page at design.htm The Validation Tool can be downloaded after successful login (using the credentials entered during registration) at vendorlogin.htm
  3. Vendors are requested to notify USFA when their product development is completed and tested to be compatible with the national NFIRS 5.0 database standard. Send the Vendor contact information, Vendor ID and Software ID to: FEMA-nfirshelp@dhs.gov
  4. Vendors who have notified USFA in step 3 above will be marked as "active" vendors on Active Vendor list. This new status will supercede the previous two status categories of "conditionally certified" and "fully certified."
  5. Fire Departments and states may use the USFA maintained list of vendors as a resource when shopping for a software product.

Because the USFA will no longer nationally certify vendor's NFIRS 5.0 transaction file formats, it will be extremely important for state agencies, fire departments and vendors to continue monitoring data quality issues.

State agencies are the authority for state reporting compliance. Issues with NFIRS vendor files should be addressed by the fire department, the vendor and the state involved. The USFA will continue to act as a resource for states to identify data problems at the national level.

Vendors should retest their software after software revisions or version changes.

In order to maintain a uniform National reporting standard:

  1. Fire departments should make sure they have the most current version of the vendor software installed.
  2. States and fire departments need to ensure that their vendor's data files remain compatible with the national system.

Vendors testing their files using the Vendor Validation Tool should review the files listed below for validation errors and/or rejected transaction information.

  • Output file (filename.out)
  • Log file of exported records (filename.log)
  • Validation error file (filename.err)
  • Rejected transactions file (filename.bad)

This information was originally posted on June 27, 2001