5 States Get $50K to Enhance Info Sharing

The states of Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, New York and North Carolina were awarded $50,000 grants by the National Governors Association (NGA) to enhance their justice information-sharing capabilities, Federal Computer Week (FCW) reports.

That funding will enable the five states to utilize the Global Justice Extensible Markup Language Data Model, a standard meant to aid public safety agencies, criminal justice organizations and courts, among others, in efficient and timely information sharing, according to FCW.

North Carolina will use the cash to further develop facial-imaging technologies so agencies can share digitized images, such as mug shots or driver’s license photos, of missing or wanted people and other individuals, FCW reports.

In Iowa, county attorneys’ offices that are participating in the state’s Iowa County Attorney Case Management pilot program will use the funds to share information pertaining to drunken-driving cases with various criminal justice organizations, according to FCW.

Minnesota plans to use the cash to establish one standard, statewide incident-reporting mechanism, FCW reports.

In 2005, the NGA and the U.S. Department of Justice passed down similar grants to Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and this year’s grants are an extension of last year’s initiative, according to FCW.

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