Search Group Incorporated

“The members consist of one representative of each state, the district of columbia, the commonwealth of puerto rico and the u.s. Virgin islands, and eight individuals appointed by the chairperson, known as at-large members.”

“Members each get one vote and elect the board of directors.”

“No committees have the authority to act on behalf of the governing body.”

“The filing of the form 990 is operational so it is reviewed by the director of operations and the executive director, not by the organization's governing body.”

“Upon request and also available on guidestar.org, a website for charity verification”

“Search's information sharing program (isp) helps state, local, and tribal criminal justice and public safety agencies and organizations develop, operate, secure, and improve information sharing within and between jurisdictions. This assistance is provided through consulting services and other resources in the areas of information sharing systems design and development, technology procurement, implementation, and interoperability. Isp performs three core services: 1) technical assistance (consulting) and training focusing on technology assessments, business process analysis, strategic planning, information sharing planning and governance, and automation requirements for criminal justice data sharing initiatives, 2) participation in developing and promoting national information standards through research and publications (including developing and implementing automated information sharing solutions that conform to national standards and best practices); and, 3) support for communications interoperability and firstnet. Isp worked with the state of hawaii to integrate searching for law enforcement incident records into an existing federated query portal. Isp continues to provide technical support to the interstate commission for adult offender supervision to provide notifications of high risk offenders transferring from one state to another. 1. Technical assistance isp provides technical assistance addressing a range of topics including establishing information sharing governance structures, developing strategic plans, assessing technical and operational capabilities, assessing readiness for information sharing, assisting in the development of rfps, and designing information sharing solutions that conform to national standards and best practices. During the reporting period isp staff assisted the virginia state police in reviewing technical requirements of an rfp to replace key criminal justice information system components including their computerized criminal history (cch) system, automated fingerprint identification system (afis) and state message switch. 2. Research and publications supporting national criminal justice standards and information sharing isp staff participated in meetings and conference calls throughout the year serving on multiple national criminal justice standards-setting and advisory bodies. Isp supported three research studies related to the analysis of criminal history data and one research study related to recidivism. Isp worked on a publication to support data dashboard development by law enforcement agencies and evaluated data quality for the national criminal incident reporting system. Specifically, search partnered with the police executive research forum (perf) and the office of community oriented policing services (cops office) on a project to help law enforcement take advantage of critical incident data through the development of information dashboards. The goal of the dashboard project is to produce two complementary guides to help departments use data to improve police operations and community relations: one guide focuses on functional requirements for dashboards and the other guide focuses on technical requirements for building and sustaining them. 3. Communications interoperability isp staff continued to support national efforts to promote communications interoperability through participation in the firstnet public safety advisory committee (psac) and safecom emergency response council (erc).”

“Search's cybercrime and digital forensics consists of a team of experts who provide technical assistance and training to local, state, and federal justice public safety agencies nationwide. Through training classes, technical workshops, and hand-on assistance, search trains and assists investigators in methods to prevent, detect and investigate the rising tide of computer crime, also referred to as e-crime, cybercrime or high-tech crime. These crimes include fraud, email threats, online stalking, identity theft, phishing, drug trafficking, cyber terrorism and child exploitation. During fy21/22, search cdf staff- 1. Trained more than 2700 law enforcement professionals in classroom and conference workshop settings throughout the nation. The topics included: online investigations: tools, tips and techniques; core skills for the investigation of mobile devices; windows forensic environment for on-scene triage; human trafficking: using the internet to investigate your case; mobile devices: what evidence is available to corroborate your case; searching social media sites for evidence, and more. Staff also presented at several national or regional high-tech crime conferences. To ensure that students receive the most up-to-date information and techniques, search staff continuously updates course curricula to include the most recent information and innovations in the field. Staff also maintains the equipment in multiple mobile training laboratories, to ensure that students are working with the latest software and hardware available. 2. Responded to over 420 requests for technical assistance from law enforcement throughout the nation. This assistance included identifying the legal contact for various internet service providers (isp), helping extract data from mobile devices, capturing digital evidence from webpages, and advising on digital evidence triage. 3. Produces resources to assist law enforcement personnel with investigations involving digital evidence. This included: a. Distributing more that 7,500 publications to law enforcement agencies across the nation. B. Providing access to online training to more than 100 law enforcement professionals. C. Maintaining the search investigative and forensic toolbar, which provides law enforcement professionals with quick links to a vast network of resources regarding technology-facilitated crime. I. Search staff continues to update the toolbar for the firefox, chrome and safari web browsers. Each of these web browsers regularly change their functionality requiring consistent updates to the toolbar. Between july 1, 2021 and june 30, 2022, the search toolbar is utilized by over 8,500 law enforcement professionals. D. Through search's on-line learning portal (solp), search has continued to provide access to its pre-recorded and live webinar series.”

“National criminal history improvement technical assistance program search's law and policy (l&p) program provides technical assistance to states and federal entities under the national criminal history improvement program (nchip) to enhance and improve criminal history systems and related records. Direct onsite and in-house technical assistance includes supporting states, local jurisdictions, and tribes in: 1) improving the accuracy and completeness of criminal history records to support both criminal justice and noncriminal justice purposes; 2) implementing multiagency and multijurisdictional information exchanges to improve criminal records and to support tactical and strategic decision-making; 3) expanding and enhancing analytical capabilities using existing records management systems and other administrative data sets; and 4) increasing the number of qualifying records submitted to the national instant criminal background check system (nics) index. Search completed 63 short-term, in-house technical assistance projects from july 1, 2021 june 30, 2022. Search staff provided these ta services to 215 individuals in 24 states. Information was provided to 10 government agencies, 14 individual citizens, one news outlet and 7 nonprofit organizations. 2020 repository operations survey during the reporting period, bjs completed the survey of state criminal history information systems, 2020. The survey was conducted by search, the national consortium for justice information and statistics, with support of bjs, office of justice programs, u.s. Department of justice. As part of its national criminal history improvement program (nchip), bjs has supported these biennial surveys since 1989, together with substantial direct funding to states and territories to improve the quality, timeliness, and accessibility of criminal history and related records, and a host of other research, conferences, workshops, and technical assistance. The 2020 report provides results from a survey of the administrators of state criminal history records repositories conducted for calendar year information ending december 31, 2020. Search surveyed 56 jurisdictions, including the 50 states, the district of columbia, and the territories. All 50 states, the district of columbia, and guam submitted survey responses. The survey findings are very detailed and provide insight into the volume of records and transactions processed by repositories, operational policies and best practices, levels of automation, measures of data quality and timeliness, types of records and systems maintained, computerized criminal history (cch) system analytics, sealing and expungement practices and more. Fbi joint task force (jtf) on rap sheet standardization search staff participated in four jtf meetings during the reporting period. Based on a review of over 200 rap sheets from 43 states, search compiled a list of potential new data elements for the jtf rap sheet specification for consideration by the jtf. Search also identified eight example rap sheets that contain information of interest to task force members. Staff provided sample rap sheets and search rap sheet assessments to the task force. Search reviewed the consolidated mapping spreadsheet to identify unused data elements in the current jtf specification that could potentially be eliminated and provided them to the task force for review. Computerized criminal history (cch) analytics toolset staff continued to refine the capabilities of the computerized criminal history cch analytics toolset. The tools being designed by serach are intended to assist cch repository personnel improve day-to-day operations by: 1) detecting data submission anomalies from contributing agencies to identify potential connectivity problems and data quality issues; 2) allowing cch staff to analyze trends such as changes in volume for reported arrests and dispositions by reporting agencies and the amount of elapsed time between arrests and dispositions; and 3)”

“Consultant & contract servcies: program service expenses 587,517. Management and general expenses 85,761. Fundraising expenses 0. Total expenses 673,278. Payroll processing fee: program service expenses 29,522. Management and general expenses 4,309. Fundraising expenses 0. Total expenses 33,831.”

“The organization's processes for oversight of the audit of its financial statements and selection of an independent accountant have not changed from the previous year.”