SEARCH 

The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics 

7311 Greenhaven Drive, Suite 145  Sacramento, California 95831 
(916) 392-2550  fax: (916) 392-8440  internet: www.search.org 

Workshop Report 

Law Enforcement Information Exchange 
Package Documentation 

Constructed from GJXDM 3.0.2 

March 15, 2005 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY................................................................................1 
INTRODUCTION, PURPOSE AND SCOPE..................................................................2 
PARTICIPANTS.....................................................................................2 
WORKSHOP METHODOLOGY.............................................................................5 
Step 1: Initial Data and Document Collection to Establish the Base Domain Model..................5 
Step 2: Pre-workshop Distribution of Workshop Documentation......................................6 
Step 3: Workshop Process.........................................................................6 
WORKSHOP DELIVERABLES............................................................................8 
Additional Business Rules and Workshop Notes.....................................................8 
Post-workshop Process............................................................................8 
HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS..............................................................................9 

This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement #2002CKWXK047, awarded by the Office of Community 
Oriented Policing Services (COPS), U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or 
recommendations expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 
position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 

Copyright  SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics 2005. 


Executive Summary 

 

In FY 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP) announced 
that a new special grant condition had been adopted, requiring any OJP grant application with the 
potential of using Extensible Markup Language (XML) to use the Global Justice XML Data Model 
(GJXDM) and to publish the schema to the central OJP repository.1 Since the initial announcement, 
the same special condition language has also been adopted by DOJ and the Department of 
Homeland Security (DHS). The underlying requirement of the condition is that data exchange 
among grant recipients must be constructed to conform to the GJXDM. 

 

According to DOJ, Conformance to Global JXDM ensures that a basic core set of information (the 
Global JXDM components) is well understood by the community and carries the same meaning. 
The result is some level of interoperability that would be unachievable with the proliferation of 
custom schemas and dictionaries. 

 

Most justice practitioners, including law enforcement officers and information technology 
professionals, clearly understand our nations need to share information among justice and public 
safety agencies at all levels of government. Many embrace the notion of interoperability for both 
voice and data exchange, and understand the utility of XML as a universal translator. The reality is, 
however, that building XML schemas (data exchange instructions) that conform to the GJXDM has 
proven to be a challenge for many of those who have attempted this work. 

 

Reference Information Exchange Package Documentations (IEPDsformerly known as Reference 
Exchange Documents) can significantly help local law enforcement agencies by providing good 
baseline models for GJXDM conformant information exchange. SEARCH, the National 
Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, with support from the U.S. Department of 
Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), has developed a first set of 
reference IEPDs for law enforcement, including an Incident Report, a Field Interview Report, a 
Booking Report, and a Charging Document. 

 

The law enforcement IEPDs have been developed collaboratively by public sector subject-matter 
experts and technical developers, with open-source, non-proprietary tools. What has been critically 
important is the subject matter expertise that has supported the association of GJXDM components 
and the use of object inheritance correctly, to provide domain models that represent the business 
requirements of the exchange before proceeding with the GJXDM mapping and schema creation. 

 

The publication of ubiquitous law enforcement IEPDs provides, for the first time, tangible models 
and GJXDM content that can be leveraged by local law enforcement agencies, whether large or 
small, urban or rural, federal, tribal, state, county or local, to begin on the path of data 
interoperability to support information sharing about crimes and offenders throughout our nation. 

 

1 The Global Justice XML Data Model Website is located at: http://it.ojp.gov/topic.jsp?topic_id=138


Introduction, Purpose and Scope 

Since the release of the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) Version 3.0 in January 2004, 
practitioners and developers from various justice communities of interest have identified 
strategies to develop Information Exchange Package Documentations (IEPDs, formerly known as 
Reference Exchange Documents), derived from GJXDM components. 

SEARCH, with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services (COPS), has recently completed a project to develop GJXDM IEPDs for Law 
Enforcement. This project has been helped by collaboration with the Organization for the 
Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Integrated Justice Technical 
Committee, the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center Southeast 
(NLECTC-SE), The Los Angeles County Information Systems Advisory Body (ISAB), the 
Maricopa County AZ ICJIS Project Office, the Law Enforcement Information Technology 
Standards Council (LEITSC), the IJIS Institute XML Advisory Committee, the Justice Information 
Sharing Practitioners (JISP), and numerous domain experts from local law enforcement, state law 
enforcement, transportation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 

 

The business purpose of the Law Enforcement IEPDs is as follows: 

 

.. To provide a model (and potentially an aspirational standard) for electronic exchange of 
justice information initiated by local law enforcement entities; 
.. To provide a model for the electronic exchange of justice information shared among law 
enforcement agencies and local, state, tribal and national partners; 
.. To provide a baseline model, especially with regard to incident data, for use by other first-
responder and incident management organizations. 

The intent of each IEPD is to provide a reference model of consistently structured and reusable 
pieces of information to be used by the law enforcement community for its internal use and for 
information exchange with other justice partners. 

 

Participants 

Travel to the IEPD workshops and meeting costs were funded by SEARCH through a grant from 
the COPS office. Additional meeting space was also provided by the Los Angeles County 
Information Systems Advisory Body (ISAB), the Maricopa County ICJIS Office, and the Integrated 
Justice Information Systems (IJIS) Institute. Many workgroup participants volunteered their time 
and covered their own travel expenses to participate in the workgroup activities. 

 

Catherine Plummer, SEARCH Justice Information Systems Specialist, served as the coordinator 
and advocate for the Law Enforcement IEPD workshops. One of her major tasks was the initial 
selection of participants for each of the work groups. Individuals from the criminal justice 
information management and technology professions were selected for the following reasons: 

 


.. Law enforcement practitioners/subject-matter experts (SMEs) with a comprehensive 
understanding of the day-to-day use and management of the specific document type 
being developed; 
.. Technology specialists from the vendor community with practical experience in 
developing and implementing GJXDM tools and instruments, including schema; 
.. Participation in either the OASIS technical committees, IJIS Institute or JISP sub 
committees currently working to establish standards for the use of the GJXDM. 

WORKGROUP 001: The following individuals participated in Workgroup 001 to 
develop an IEPD for Incident Report/Incident Data/NDEx. 

 

Participant 
Organization 
Workgroup Role 

Debra Cohen, PhD 
Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services (COPS) 
US Department of Justice 
Project funding and 
coordination 

Jennifer Hicks Zeunick 
LEITSC 
Coordination, Education & 
Outreach 

Scott Came 
Justice Integration Solutions 
Facilitator 

Catherine Plummer 
SEARCH 
Co-facilitator 

John Aerts 
LA County ISAB 
Subject-matter expert (SME) 

Scott Edson 
LA County Sheriffs Department 
SME 

Jeff Harmon 
Northrup Grumman (formerly 
Maine State Police) 
SME 

Jackie Vandercook 
Tennessee Bureau of 
Investigation/NIBRS 
SME (NIBRS/UCR) 

Paul Herman 
Baltimore Police Department 
SME 

Scott Shaw 
Baltimore Police Department 
SME 

Jeffrey Cooper 
Baltimore Police Department 
SME 

Rick Brown 
FBI 
SME 

Sarah Wilson 
FBI 
SME (NIBRS/UCR) 

Cherie Morgan 
FBI contractor 
Technical (NDEx coordination) 

Scott Smith 
FBI contractor 
Technical (NDEx coordination) 

David Kelley 
DOT/IEEE 
Technical 
Transportation/ 
IEEE 1512 coordination 

Eric Lockhart 
Marietta PD 
SME 

Monica North 
Albuquerque Police Department 
SME 

Dennis Frye 
ARJIS 
SME 

Dustin Henson 
ARJIS 
Technical 


WORKGROUP 002: The following individuals participated in Workgroup 002 to 
develop an IEPD for Field Interview(Investigation) Report. 

 

Participant 
Organization 
Workgroup Role 

Winfield Wagner 
Crossflo (formerly ARJIS) 
Facilitator 

Tim Wilson 
Tritech 
Co-facilitator 

Bona Nasution 
MTG 
Technical 

Tom Kooy 
JISP (formerly CriMNet) 
SME 

Pamela Scanlon 
ARJIS 
SME 

Dustin Henson 
ARJIS 
SME 
Technical 

Coleman Knight 
NLECTC-SE 
SME 

Karen Cordray 
North Charleston PD 
SME 

WORKGROUP 003: The following individuals participated in Workgroup 003 to 
develop an IEPD for a Booking/Arrest Report. 

 

Participant 
Organization 
Workgroup Role 

Nancy Rutter 
Maricopa County ICJIS 
Facilitator 

Joe Mierwa 
VisionAir 
Co-facilitator 

Marcus Leon 
LA County ISAB 
SME 

Karen Cordray 
North Charleston PD 
SME 

Gerry Coleman 
Wisconsin Crime Information Bureau 
SME; Technical 

Coleman Knight 
NLECTC-SE 
SME 

WORKGROUP 004: The following individuals participated in Workgroup 004 to 
develop an IEPD for a Charging Document (Juvenile Petition, Complaint, Information, 
Grand Jury Indictment). 

 

Participant 
Organization 
Workgroup Role 

John Ruegg 
LA County ISAB 
Facilitator 

Bob Slaski 
Advanced Technology Systems 
Technical 

Jerry Floyd 
LA County ISAB 
Co-facilitator 

David Goodwin 
Maricopa County 
SME 

Lisa Miller 
LA County Prosecutor 
SME 

Renee Cobb 
JPS Consulting, Ltd. 
SME 


Workshop Methodology 

In June, 2004, a workshop, co-sponsored by SEARCH and the OASIS Integrated Justice 
Technical committee, was conducted to establish GJXDM base schemas for court reference 
exchange documents. During that workshop an initial methodology was established to capture a 
suite of documentation for developing domain-focused, GJXDM-conforming schemas. The 
methodology was based on obtaining the data requirements and business requirements for a 
reference schema based on real world database structures, documents and forms used by justice 
practitioners. Technical participants turned those requirements into subset, extension, constraint 
and document schemas based on the GJXDM components. This first cut methodology has been 
outlined in the OASIS Integrated Justice Technical Committees Exchange Document 
Development Process document. 

 

This methodology, with some modifications to the steps and deliverables, was used as the basis 
for the SEARCH Law Enforcement IEPD Workshops, which took place in November 2004 and 
January 2005. The following is a review of that modified methodology and its steps: 

Step 1: Initial Data and Document Collection to Establish the Base Domain 
Model 

One month prior to the scheduled workshop, the facilitators began collecting numerous source 
documents, database structures and forms used by an assortment of justice agencies: 

 

Development artifacts reviewed by IEPD workgroup teams included: 

 

.. Records Management and Case Management system input screens 
.. Data dictionaries and element lists 
.. Example incident reports, field interview reports, booking and arrest reports, criminal 
complaints, informations, grand jury indictments, and juvenile petitions 
.. Supplemental reports collected to augment initial incident data 

If the members were unable to provide their reports, screens and database reference documentation 
before the start of the workshop, they were instructed to bring those items to the workshop for 
group discussion. During the workshops, additional reference artifacts were collected and reviewed 
by team members, including draft FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Divisions National 
Data Exchange Project (N-DEx) data element user guides and schemas. 

 

From the collected source material, each facilitator created initial products to be used during the 
workshop session, including: 

 

.. An object-oriented domain model, described either with UML static structure diagrams or 
MS PowerPoint Diagram illustrating the base objects (complex types) that could be used by 
all exchange partners. 
.. Spreadsheet mapping the domain model to GJXDM structures. 


Step 2: Pre-workshop Distribution of Workshop Documentation 

One week prior to the workshop, an initial package of documentation was distributed to the invited 
participants. The facilitators requested additional user documentation, as required. Additions and 
changes to the documentation packages were distributed to the invited participants prior to the start 
of each workshop. 

Step 3: Workshop Process 

During the workshop, each workgroup followed a basic three-step process in developing the Law 
Enforcement IEPDs: 

 

1. Domain modeling 
2. GJXDM mapping 
3. Schema building 

The domain modeling step was conducted during either one or two face-to-face sessions. The first 
session was held in Los Angeles County, California, November 15-17, 2004. The second session 
was held in Ashburn, Virginia, January 25-26, 2005. 

 

During the morning of the first face-to-face session (Los Angeles), the technical facilitators met 
initially to review and agree upon a coordinated technical process, including: 1) domain modeling; 
2) GJXDM mapping; 3) schema creation, and 4) packaging, to ensure that work product from each 
workgroup would be consistent. Following the facilitator discussion, all workgroup members 
participated in a collaborative two-hour session on Level Setting and Overview of the Process, 
which provided a background and framework of the GJXDM and IEPD objectives. 

 

Workgroup members agreed to the following principles for the construction of IEPD artifacts: 

.. Following a principle established by earlier workshops, the base object for the schema 
would represent a law enforcement reference document represented by IncidentReport, 
FieldInterviewReport, BookingReport, or ChargingDocument, derived from the GJXDM 
3.0.2 DocumentType. 
.. The development of the schema package would utilize objects and tags derived from or 
extended appropriately from the GJXDM 3.0.2 model. 
.. Missing elements or objects (complex types), identified by the workshop members, would 
be noted and provided to the XML Structure Task Force (XSTF) as potential extensions or 
modifications to the GJXDM. 
.. The schema created by each group would represent a subset schema of all possible 
information that might be required for a law enforcement information exchange package. 
.. The schema created would be a reference schema that would enable the sharing of 
information across justice agencies and not a representation of any specific agencys system 
or document/form. 


.. If a piece of information could be represented in GJXDM 3.0.2 as both a Text Type and 
Code Type element (i.e. race, sex, hair color, eye color, etc.), the developed schema would 
include both element type tag names. 
.. As much as possible, object relationships would follow the hierarchy of GJXDM 3.0.2 
inheritance. 
.. Development of more specific extension or constraint schemas would not be the 
responsibility of the IEPD Workgroup but that of any individual agency intending to use the 
reference IEPD as a baseline for its local implementation. 

The participants gathered into separate groups for face-to-face sessions focused on the individual 
reference documents. Each group initially created a domain model (a graphical depiction of the 
document structure) from existing paper forms and screen shots as well as business experts 
knowledge, using GJXDM where appropriate, but without being constrained by GJXDM. The 
groups used either Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation, or simply associated the business 
level data structures with PowerPoint or MS Word graphics. 

During breaks in the members discussion, the facilitators completed the following tasks: 

.. Updated the documentation 
.. Noted items and ideas that would help future users of the schema in understanding the 
content of the schema 
.. Noted items and ideas that may impact future versions of the GJXDM 

Workgroups 002, 003 and 004 completed their domain models and initial GJXDM mapping during 
the first session in Los Angeles. Workgroup 001 required one more face-to-face session to complete 
its domain model, and met again in Ashburn, Virginia, for two additional days. 

The GJXDM mapping step was completed remotely. The mapping spreadsheet shell was pre-
populated by extracting information from the domain model segments. The facilitators performed 
the initial mapping and presented the spreadsheet to the workgroup for review. The completed 
mapping provided the want list to be input into the GTRI (Georgia Tech Research Institute) 
subset schema tool. 

The facilitators then created the schemas; the subset schema was created using the online GTRI 
subset schema generation tool. The constraint schema was created by transforming the subset 
schema using a StyleSheet built during previous IEPD development projects. The extension and 
document schemas were authored by hand. 

 

Finally, the facilitators built a sample instance to illustrate each IEPD, as well as to test the integrity 
of the schemas. The artifacts were packaged into a zip file, and the IEPD documentation drafted to 
conclude the project. 



Workshop Deliverables 

It was the responsibility of the facilitators to create a Zip Folder file that provided the necessary 
documentation to describe and use the base IEPD schemas, as well as the domain model and 
GJXDM mapping spreadsheet. The following artifacts are included in each IEP: 

 

Artifact File Name 

Purpose 

<DocumentName>IEPD.doc 

Background documentation for each IEPD 

*.zargo files 

UML class diagrams for segments of the domain model, in 
ArgoUML format 

*.png files 

UML class diagrams for segments of the domain model, in 
PNG format 

*.ppt files 

PowerPoint diagram of domain model(s) 

GJXDM-mapping.xls 

Spreadsheet containing mapping of domain model entities 
to GJXDM 

Constraint-schema.xsd 

GJXDM-conformant constraint schema 

Extension-schema.xsd 

GJXDM-conformant extension schema 

Document-schema.xsd 

GJXDM-conformant document schema 

Subset/ 

Directory containing GJXDM subset package, including 
want list document that can be input into GTRI subset 
schema generator 

Sample-
<DocumentName>.xml 

A sample instance valid against the document schema 

Constraint-schema-
transform.xsl 

XSLT StyleSheet that creates the constraint schema from 
the subset schema (there is a minor amount of hand 
editing necessary in the constraint schema) 

Additional Business Rules and Workshop Notes 

Some of the workgroups have also identified business rules associated with the Reference GJXDM 
IEPD. These rules were identified by the IEPD workgroup in the course of developing the domain 
model and GJXDM mappings. 

 

Additionally, several of the workgroups produced detailed workshop notes, which chronicled the 
IEPD development process, business and technical issues that arose during the process, and the 
disposition thereof. These workshop notes could be of great value to law enforcement information 
technology staff as they use these models for their local implementations. 

Post-workshop Process 

Following the workshop sessions these steps and tasks were completed: 

 

.. The facilitators reviewed the notes and support documentation and finalized the first 
drafts of the workshop deliverables. 
.. The draft artifacts were distributed to the other participating members of the workshop 
for their review, either through email or, in the case of one workgroup, posted on a 
workgroup Wiki site. 


.. Comments, corrections or adjustments, identified during the members review, were 
distributed back to the facilitators. 
.. The facilitators made the appropriate changes or adjustment, provided by the members 
review to the final draft of the documentation. 
.. The final workshop draft of the documentation was distributed to SEARCH for project 
review, Web-based publication, education and outreach. 

Horizontal Analysis 

At the conclusion of the four IEPD workshops, facilitators from each met for two days in Phoenix, 
Arizona, to perform an initial horizontal analysis among the four IEPDs, as well as the Uniform 
Rap Sheet IEPD developed by the Joint Task Force on Rap Sheet Standardization, for the purpose 
of: 

.. Ensuring consistent structures among all law enforcement IEPDs 
.. Defining core justice data entities to facilitate composition-oriented information sharing 
using the GJXDM 
.. Defining high level aggregate data entities to support the National Information Exchange 
Model (NIEM). 

The horizontal analysis meeting was hosted by the Maricopa County, Arizona ICJIS project office 
in its facility on March 3-4, 2005, and was attended by the following participants: 

 

Participant 
Organization 
Workgroup Represented 

Scott Came 
Justice Integration Solutions 
001 Incident Report 

Catherine Plummer 
SEARCH 
001 Incident Report 

Winfield Wagner 
Crossflo (formerly ARJIS) 
002 Field Interview Report 

Dustin Henson 
ARJIS 
002 Field Interview Report 

Nancy Rutter 
Maricopa County ICJIS 
003 Booking Report 

John Ruegg 
LA County ISAB 
004 Charging Document 

David Goodwin 
Maricopa County ICJIS 
004 Charging Document 

Kate Silhol 
NLETS 
Uniform Rap Sheet 

A report defining this analysis as potential High Level, Basic and Core Justice Entities will be 
provided, in collaboration with the OASIS Integrated Justice Technical Committee, in April 2005.