Through its Justice Integration Information Technology Initiative, the US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs has established an XML Technology Working Group to coordinate the efforts of federal and state agencies in the design of interoperable standards for criminal history and public safety records. As of Fall 2001, the working group has successfully completed a project merging/aligning data elements used in three key specifications: (1) the 'Interstate Criminal History Transmission Specification' developed by the Joint Task Force on Rap Sheet Standardization, (2) the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) XML Specification developed by the RISS, and (3) the 'Electronic Court Filing Proposed Standard' developed by LegalXML. The working group has published a document on the Principles of XML Development for Justice and Public Safety as well as a data dictionary with some 128 XML Schemas. The goals of the Justice XML Standards Initiative are "to facilitate sharing of justice information and integration of justice information systems among various federal, state, and regional jurisdictions; to Establish 'ground floor' information standards; to guide and assist justice and public safety information systems developers; and to further other efforts to share justice information."

".... OJP is pulling together three major XML initiatives: the Criminal Histories, Law Enforcement Intelligence, and Electronic Court Filing initiatives. The Rap Sheet Standardization initiative is an effort to create a standard rap sheet across state and federal jurisdictions. A standardized rap sheet, when fully implemented, will provide a single, complete response in a consistent format. The Law Enforcement Intelligence Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) initiative seeks to create RISS XML specifications to allow dissimilar systems to communicate criminal intelligence information. The Electronic Court Filing initiative seeks to create a Court Filing Specification to provide a mechanism for attorneys and other users of the court systems to electronically transmit and file court documents in active cases... The next steps in the process are to institutionalize standards process, to establish justice standards registry program, to submit reconciled XML specs for inclusion in a registry, to identify new XML candidates for the process, and to enter XML data dictionary into standards registry program. Additionally, the group needs to incorporate standards activities into OJP/Global Web site, to promote the XML standards program, to continue to support the development of information sharing standards with an emphasis on XML, and to publish and disseminate the XML reconciliation report..." [from XML.GOV presentation of Bob Greeves]