The following summarizes activities at recent meetings in support of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global). For more information on the Global Initiative, please visit.
Global Services Task Team Summary
May 4, 2009—Philadelphia, PA
The Services Task Team (STT) worked on developing standardized national information sharing services. The primary work effort was the development of a Fingerprint/Biometric Information Exchange Service Specification for use in the Justice Reference Architecture (JRA) Framework (see for more information). The team worked in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to ensure that their efforts filled gaps in existing processes (as opposed to duplicating efforts) and that the specifications would meet National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST)/FBI standards and practices.
In addition, the STT worked to finalize high-priority fusion center service specifications that were developed through previous workshops/Web conferences. These service specifications will provide fusion centers with services for requesting and verifying Terrorist Screening Center encounter information, exchanging inmate release data,transmitting suspicious activity reporting (SAR) data from local agencies to fusion centers, and requesting information from another fusion center.
Global Infrastructure/Standards Working Group (GISWG) Summary
May 5–6, 2009—Philadelphia, PA
The opening session of the GISWG meeting featured sharing of success stories and lessons learned presented by state implementers of the JRA Framework, including a presentation of the CONNECT Project (an information sharing project amongWyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and Alabama, utilizing the JRA framework, Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management framework [GFIPM; more at and National Information Exchange Model [NIEM]; more at and of the SAR Implementation with JNET.
After the opening plenary session, the Services Implementation Committee (SIC) and the Management & Policy (M&P) Committee separated to address issues involving policy and services development.
- The SIC worked to refine and finalize additional JRA resources, such as the Web Services Reliable Secure Service Interaction Profile, the Services Identification and Design Guidelines, and the Service Specification Package.
- The M&P worked to draft a Service Level Agreement template for JRA services.
Both committees will continue their work to develop a complete set of standards, guidelines, and policies for specifying an interoperable set of justice information exchanges.
The highlight of the concluding session was the Global Roadmap presentation by
Ms. Christina Rogers, California Department of Justice, and Ms. Iveta Topalova, IJIS Institute. This roadmap illustrates how the various Global standards work together to facilitate information sharing.
During the concluding roundtable, GISWG members’ recommendationsfor future efforts included the following priority: developing the next suite of services based on the expressed needs of practitioners in the field and driven by Global priorities.
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