Enhancement of Mississippi's Criminal History System

The goal of the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP) is to improve the Nation's safety and security by enhancing the quality, completeness, and accessibility of criminal history record information and by insuring the nationwide implementation of criminal justice and non-criminal justice background check systems. BJS provides direct financial and technical assistance to the States to improve criminal history and other related records and to build their infrastructure to connect to national record check systems both to supply information and to conduct the requisite checks.
Under this award, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (MS DPS) will use funds to upgrade its aging and under-capacity state message switch equipment to enhance and expand electronic transmissions that forward fingerprint and arrest cycle data to the national database. National Information Exchange (NIEM) compliant transactions will meet load requirements of additional NIEM transaction types and accommodate increased volume. In addition, the MS DPS will develop software necessary to enable electronic access to state records on an intrastate or interstate basis. Funds will be secured to contract services to configure, transfer and test the state message switch software and manage Mississippi's much needed upgrade project. CA/NCF