Justice Issues: Justice Information Sharing

Bureau of Justice Assistance - Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice - Solutions for Safer Communities

Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program

Justice Information Sharing

NEW! Performance Measurement for Justice Information System Projects

Top Ten Global Accomplishments

The question of how to overcome obstacles to sharing information among law enforcement and other justice system components is a significant issue that impacts the safety of Americans. In today's electronic age, the public has grown to expect justice system integration and appropriate information sharing.

All law enforcement and justice agencies-local, state, and federal-need to find ways to overcome obstacles to sharing information. Doing so not only increases their ability to solve crimes and keep communities safer, it also helps them meet their increasing responsibilities. While the sharing of information must be the responsibility of criminal justice agencies, at BJA we are committed to providing the resources and assistance needed to make it as easy as possible.

BJA will work to increase the number of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that use the Regional Information Sharing Systems. Wider use of these innovative regional systems will go far to increase intelligence sharing and secure communications among the thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Through OJP's Information Technology Initiatives web site, BJA, on behalf of OJP, will continue to help the criminal justice system share information by providing research and guidance on strategic planning and governance; standards, infrastructure, and architecture; privacy and information quality; security; and resource management issues.
Through DOJ's Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative Advisory Committee, a group of key officials from local, state, tribal, federal, and other justice related organizations, BJA will continue working to bring together representatives from the justice community to overcome barriers to justice information sharing across agencies, disciplines, and levels of government.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sponsors the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW), which provides real-time access to public sex offender data nationwide with a single Internet search. NSOPR allows parents and other concerned citizens to search existing public state and territory sex offender registries beyond their own states. It connects existing registries by using web services and DOJ's Global Justice eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Data Model (GJXDM), which allows systems to "speak" to each other. NSOPR does not collect or control sex offender data, nor does it charge states or territories to link to the national site.
DOJ and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced an unprecedented partnership to expand the use of GJXDM: the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). BJA sponsored the 2006 Annual GJXDM Users' Conference featuring important sessions on information technology, related policy, and discussions of exemplary implementations of GJXDM. In addition, BJA provides a 24-hour virtual help desk to support practitioners implementing GJXDM-based systems.
BJA's Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification (SAVIN) Program assists states in building, implementing, or improving their statewide automated victim notification system. The program will help grant recipients acquire the technology to manage critical information about offenders statewide and for victims to have access to this information in near real-time. Grant recipients will be required to adhere to GJXDM standards for justice information sharing.