U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Suspicious Activity Reporting: From a Portfolio of NIEM Success Stories

NCJ Number
233608
Date Published
2010
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses the use of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) to apply the Global Justice XML capabilities and standardize the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) around the Nation, offering an exchange of information and interoperability among Federal, State, and local levels.
Abstract
How best to make use of data on suspicious behaviors has been a challenge to many State and local departments and officers. Much of the data had been captured using nonstandard formats, with differing definitions, and maintained by independent agencies. With the utilization of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), there is now for suspicious activity reporting (SAR) a standard way to express and share information between Federal, State, and local agencies. There is a standardized set of data. When creating the SAR Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD), the IEPD drew upon the metadata dictionaries already contained in the NIEM, based on Global Justice XML (State and local metadata) and new entries from other domains. By the end of 2009, the Nationwide SAR Initiative was launched and soon accepted by multiple police organizations, and linked to the Department of Homeland Security, to the Department of Defense, and the FBI's eGuardian system.