"Everyone recognized the need for improving information sharing after 9/11," DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd said last week. The data stored in OneDOJ is available to state and local law enforcement now, Boyd said, but they must get the information from individual DOJ units.

"What [OneDOJ] does is simply consolidate that information in a way that state and local authorities can access it in a single portal," Boyd said. "We clearly feel that this is not a new giant database in any way but is a new way for law enforcement to use information that is available to them."

Hitch was unavailable for an interview about OneDOJ last week. Boyd said the database has high-level safeguards and includes an access log that keeps records of all users who search and review the database. He wouldn't identify the software that the DOJ is using for the database, which contains about 1 million records now and is expected to triple in size within three years.

Work on OneDOJ began in late 2005, and pilot projects linking the database to local and regional information-sharing systems in locations such as Seattle and San Diego were launched last year.

In his memo, McNulty wrote that the DOJ will support a set of common standards with OneDOJ and remain vendor-neutral, allowing state and local governments to use any compatible systems. Boyd said the standards include terminology and data exchange specifications and an XML data model that are built into the National Information Exchange Model created by the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security in 2005.