Federal Cooperative Agreement Award Summary

The Wyoming Attorney General's Office received $951,422 in funding through the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP, CFDA 16.554) administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, effective July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. The cooperative agreement funds the Wyoming Criminal Records Improvement Project, which addresses critical infrastructure modernization and data standardization requirements. Primary deliverables include updating the Wyoming Message Switch to comply with the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Extensible Markup Language (XML) data format standards mandated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for all data requests and responses. This modernization will enhance the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation's capacity to serve as the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) System Agency and facilitate National Crime Information Center (NCIC) access for authorized law enforcement agencies throughout the state.

In addition to system modernization, the award supports procurement of a replacement livescan fingerprint device for one sheriff's office, enabling electronic transmission of fingerprint cards to the Division of Criminal Investigation. This capital improvement will reduce processing delays in updating criminal arrest records and mitigate the risk of physical fingerprint card loss during transmission. The project directly supports the NCHIP program's dual mission of improving criminal history record accuracy for law enforcement operations and enhancing data quality for firearm purchase background checks conducted through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).