[1][2] Crimtrac had been responsible for developing and maintaining national information-sharing services between state, territory and federal law enforcement agencies.
CrimTrac's information-sharing capabilities were specifically designed to equip police with the information needed to make decisions to assist in investigating and preventing crime.
Fifty million dollars was provided by the Federal government following the 1998 election, and procedural and administrative work commenced to create CrimTrac and transition the NEPI systems over.
An Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) signed by Federal, State and Territory law enforcement ministers in July 2000 has underpinned the agency's endeavours.
Even with the advantage of an IGA, CrimTrac's startup, growth and management in the first five years was challenging as it addressed its NEPI legacy whilst scoping new IT systems to deliver better shared policing information.
Those years required sustained effort by the staff of CrimTrac and by its Board of Management, drawn from the IGA parties, at Police Commissioner level.
The national DNA database took eight years to become fully functional because of minor differences in Commonwealth, state and territory legislation.
To achieve optimal outcomes from its new or improved national IT systems, CrimTrac had worked hard for a new and better culture of information sharing between police services.
The NAFIS assists Australian police to solve crime by quickly and reliably establishing a person's identity from fingerprint and palm impressions.
The NAFIS enables near ‘real time’ upload of prints from crime scenes which makes it possible for police to identify a suspect in minutes.
The NAFIS contains finger and palm print images collected from individuals by Australian police and immigration authorities.
During this period, there was 367,751 searches conducted on finger and palm prints from latent fingerprints, which are collected at crime scenes.
The NCIDD enables police agencies to compare DNA profiles from a crime scene with convicted offenders throughout Australia.
The NCOS consists of the Australian National Child Offender Register (ANCOR) and the Managed Person System (MPS).
In May 2012 the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) was the first authorised non-police agency to gain access to NPRS for law-enforcement purposes.