Justice office leads XML standardization effort

The Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs is leading an effort to develop standards for using Extensible Markup Language within the law enforcement and criminal justice communities.Eventually, such standards could facilitate the sharing of criminal records and related information among federal, state and local investigators—which is fast becoming a top priority in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.About 30 agencies, ranging from public safety organizations to the National Governors Association, are participating in a federal advisory committee known as the Global Justice Information Network, program manager Pat McCreary told the XML Working Group at today’s meeting.Within the network, a working group has met three times since June to designate consistent names for data elements, said Robert Greeves, a senior policy analyst with OJP. For example, the data tags personName, palmPrints and rapSheetRequest would identify the same kind of data in all documents adhering to the network’s XML standard.The working group has drafted a dictionary of 128 standardized data elements and sample schemas that go with them, Greeves said. He cautioned, however, that nationwide implementation of these standards may take two or three years.More information on the XML Working Group is available at .