"Everybody wants to share, but nobody wants to use the same product," said Chief Gary Vest of the Powell, Ohio, Police Department, near Columbus. In a major metropolitan area in Ohio, there can be 30 different police departments, each using different products that aren't linked, he said. That made it difficult for local departments to link suspects and crimes in neighboring jurisdictions, he said.

To make the systems compatible, crime records management vendors rewrote their software so data from participating departments could be converted into the OHLEG-SE format for easier sharing of data, he said. The vendors use a special object-oriented Global Justice XML Data Model and interoperability standards from the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Justice for such purposes.

What makes the OHLEG-SE different from other fledgling police interoperability programs in the U.S., Vest said, is that it's a standards-based system. "You don't have to throw out your vendor to play," he said.

OHLEG-SE is not yet linked to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database operated by the FBI, but that is expected eventually. The NCIC database is one of the most commonly used in the country. So far, OHLEG-SE can't search on criminal "M.O.'s" but that capability is being worked on, Vest said. By combing local police records, officers can search for a suspect's name even before it's in the national NCIC database or other larger data repositories, he said. "You're a step earlier."

Other regional police interoperability projects are in progress around the nation, he said, but this is believed to be the first statewide effort. In San Diego County, police agencies have been sharing crime data for 25 years using a custom program called the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS).