Maintenance and Operation of the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website

Since the passage of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) has designed a national strategy for comprehensive sex offender registration and public notification. The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW), the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) Exchange Portal (the Portal), the Tribe and Territory Sex Offender Registry System (TTSORS), and the Sex Offender Registry Tool (SORT) are integral parts of this strategy.

The challenges of managing the resources are numerous. They include managing elaborate technical applications and systems, fostering relationships with many different jurisdictions, providing technical support for a variety of issues, building flexible applications that can interface with a variety of systems, and identifying new strategies that improve collaboration.

Over the past 16 years, the Institute for Intergovernmental Research (IIR) has worked with SORNA jurisdictions to overcome many of these challenges and has developed a strong working partnership with the various states, tribes, and territories that it supports through these programs. Since the inception of NSOPW, the Portal, TTSORS, and SORT, IIR has worked at the direction of the SMART Office to develop, enhance, maintain, and operate these resources. To ensure that these technical programs are effectively managed, IIR employs a project strategy that includes diligent planning, constant effective monitoring, exceptional customer service, and efficient problem resolution, all tied together with IIR’s unique technical expertise. As a result of this strategy, NSOPW, the Portal, TTSORS, and SORT have become invaluable and trusted resources for the public and the organizations that use them.

For these resources to continue to meet the goals and mission of the SMART Office, IIR will fulfill one all-encompassing goal with numerous supporting deliverables. Our goal: “To provide the public with information about registered sex offenders and facilitate information sharing among jurisdictions.” The accomplishment of this goal, through the execution of the deliverables and tasks outlined in this application, will provide the SMART Office with the resources necessary to provide the training, technical assistance, and technical systems the SORNA jurisdictions need to effectively manage their registered sex offenders and share information with each other and the public.

The purpose of NSOPW.gov is to provide the public with information about registered sex offenders and facilitate information sharing among jurisdictional registry officials. NSOPW.gov provides the public with a single U.S. government website that links state, District of Columbia, territory, and tribal public sex offender registries in one national search site. The NSOPW.gov domain and home page is now hosted by the Office of Justice Programs. However, the grantee is responsible for all services and jurisdictional connections to NSOPW. This supplemental award will provide funding to continue assisting jurisdictions in making their sex offender data available in response to searches conducted on NSOPW.gov, along with related technology tools to assist jurisdictions with registering and tracking sex offenders, sharing information about registered sex offenders with other jurisdictions, and providing community notification and information about registered sex offenders to the public.