Overview[]
The FBI National Data Exchange (N-DEx) is a national criminal law enforcement information-sharing system available through LEO and other web-based means to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies. It provides law enforcement agencies with a powerful investigative tool to search, link, analyze and share criminal justice information on a national basis to a degree never before possible. N-DEX was developed as a full criminal justice life-cycle data repository by the FBI’s CJIS Division and is governed by the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board (APB), which is an inter-agency board responsible for reviewing policy issues and appropriate technical and operational issues related to the programs administered by the FBI's CJIS Division.
N-DEX serves as a repository of information contributed by local, state, tribal, and federal Law Enforcement Agencies, including DOJ. Data currently consists mostly of incident and arrest reports, but will eventually include booking, incarceration, parole, probation, and other types of information. N-DEX allows any agency to contribute and share law enforcement information with any other agency. The system provides collaborative tools and powerful analytical and correlation capabilities to help investigators solve crimes by illuminating useful but not obvious relationships between people, places, and things.
As of October 2010, the N-DEX system had approximately 8,000 registered federated users and a total of 101 million records contributed by 23 local, state, regional, or federal information sharing systems comprised of law enforcement agencies (LEAs), including the FBI.
Source[]
Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Information Sharing Report 2010 (full-text).