Ohio FY 2019 National Criminal History Improvement Program

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 noncriminal 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 the NCHIP FY 2019 project, the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services will transfer funds to the Ohio Office of the Attorney General, Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) to focus on the improvement of the Computerized Criminal History (CCH) system by archiving current paper files to electronic storage and retrieval of missing dispositions. To accomplish this goal, BCI will contract with an approved vendor that has the ability to archive the fingerprint card files in accordance with the American National Standards Institute- National Institute of Standards (ANSI-NIST – ITL-1-2011) established for the presentation of fingerprint integrity for examination. BCI will continue to implement procedures to complete arrest reporting and research missing dispositions in order to provide the relevant data in both state and federal files. BCI will continue the relationship with the current contractor secured under the FY2018 award. The role of the contractor is to assess the state’s criminal history records and locate missing dispositions on behalf of BCI through access to the CCH system and provide an additional 20,000 dispositions. This initiative will ensure complete and accessible records, and increase the efficiency of criminal history record requests.

The second initiative will be the continuing CCH Replacement Project which was implemented to provide new and enhanced reporting capabilities for improved communication with state and federal partners. Funding for this project will improve reporting capabilities in a new criminal history database to provide transparent and helpful information to state and federal partners.

(CA/NCF)