SEARCH becomes a NIEMOpen sponsor

Joins Project Governing Board

WASHINGTON , DC, UNITED STATES, March 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, has become the newest sponsor of NIEMOpen, the collaborative created to develop open-source data standards for information sharing across domains and jurisdictions worldwide. SEARCH has 57 years of experience supporting the information sharing, information technology, cybercrime investigative and digital forensics, and criminal records systems needs of State, local and tribal justice and public safety agencies and practitioners nationwide.

SEARCH has played an important role in the development of data standards in the criminal justice field, having created the first report on criminal justice data standards in 1970. SEARCH was instrumental in developing the comprehensive data systems and the offender-based transaction statistics models that states ultimately adopted to improve information sharing across components of the justice system at the federal, state, and local level.

SEARCH has supported the NIEM initiative since its inception, and many of SEARCH's original works formed the foundation of the National Information Exchange Model as it was first implemented. Derek Veitenheimer, Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SEARCH Group, Incorporated, said that “the members of SEARCH are fully committed to the principles of open source data standards as embodied in the NIEMOpen program. It is a natural extension of our work to participate fully in the future development of these important tools for improving information sharing.”

As a sponsor, SEARCH becomes a member of the NIEMOpen Project Governing Board, which is the place where decisions are made regarding the future development of the functions and capabilities of NiEMOpen to further advance information sharing on a global scale. Yogesh Chawla, Director, Software and Data Engineering Program at SEARCH, has been appointed as the representative of SEARCH on the Project Governing Board.

In announcing the addition of SEARCH to the Project Governing Board, Chairman Paul Wormeli said that “we are delighted to have a stronger involvement of SEARCH and its members to ensure the work of NIEMOpen remains focused on serving the community of interests that seek better ways to share information and improve mission effectiveness across the criminal justice spectrum.” Wormeli was also the original national project director of Project SEARCH, the forerunner organization to SEARCH Group, Inc.

Under the auspices of OASIS, NIEMOpen provides a robust data model containing over 20,000 harmonized data components serving 18 different domains, a set of naming and design rules to ensure interoperability across domains, automated tools for creating message exchanges, and associated training materials. All of which are available at no cost on NIEMOpen.org.

Paul Wormeli, Chairman
NIEMOpen Project Governing Board
+1 703-627-8154
paul.wormeli@ijis.org

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