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State Repository Records and Reporting Quality Assurance Program (QAP)

The State Repository Records and Reporting Quality Assurance Program (QAP) offers voluntary performance standards for various information maintenance and reporting requirements of State criminal history repositories. The program seeks to encourage justice data quality and information integrity through these standards.

SEARCH oversees this program, under funding and direction of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice.

The maintenance and reporting requirements imposed on state repositories can include:

• Criminal history record operations
• Mandatory reporting
• Responding to survey requests
• Reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
• Reporting to sex offender registries.

Representatives of state repositories helped develop the program, which includes useful quality assurance self-inspection tools—a QA checklist and a methodology to calculate costs to repositories of civil fingerprint handling. Also assisting in development of this program were officials from the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division. The checklist and fee analysis tool have been reviewed by the SEARCH Membership Group and pilot tested in several states. As a convenience, the tools are provided in a Word MS format that enables them to be filled out electronically or in hard copy.

This program implements several of the record improvement recommendations included in the criminal history background check report produced by the Attorney General at the direction of the Congress.

Resource Documents/Tools

The downloadable resource documents for this program are:

• State Repository Quality Assurance Program Guide
• Companion tools (fill out electronically or in hard copy):
• Quality Assurance Program Checklist 
• A Methodology for Determining Costs Associated with Noncriminal Justice Purpose Background Checks 
• FBI CJIS Division, Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification, December 2012
• Title 28, CFR Part 20, Criminal Justice Information Systems

These resource documents are available on external websites:

• Joint Task Force on Rap Sheet Standardization, Interstate Criminal History Transmission Specification, XML Version 4.1, December 2011; the specification is composed of multiple files maintained at www.nlets.org.
• The Interstate Identification Index/National Fingerprint File Operations Manual, is restricted to authorized users of the FBI's Law Enforcement Online website.
  • For current LEO users: After logging into LEO, go to the III Special Interest Group, III-SEG, to access the manual.
  • For others: To view information regarding your eligibility to join LEO and to obtain a LEO account, contact LEO directly at www.leo.gov and follow the links to view LEO Membership Criteria and to download the LEO User Application, which contains instructions for submitting the application.