SMART Office Timeline

July 27, 2006

• President George W. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA). The SMART Office is authorized in the AWA to provide support for the implementation of Title I, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). AWA also renamed the National Sex Offender Public Registry as the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW.gov) in remembrance of a 22-year old college student from Minnesota taken across state lines.

2006

• On July 1, the Attorney General announced that all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico, were participating in NSOPR, which allows one search for all jurisdictions.
• The SMART Office opened in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs in December 2006. Laura L. Rogers was the first director at the SMART Office.
• The Support for Adam Walsh Act Implementation grant program was established in fiscal year 2007 to assist state, local and tribal jurisdictions in developing and/or enhancing programs designed to implement the requirements of SORNA.
• The SMART Office assumed responsibility for the management of the newly renamed NSOPW.gov.

2007

• The 2007 National Symposium on Sex Offender Management and Accountability was held July 25-27 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

2008

• The SMART Office established the International Tracking of Sex Offenders Working Group.
• The SMART Office began administrating the Comprehensive Approaches to Sex Offender Management Training and Technical Assistance Program in fiscal year 2008.
• In July 2008, the SORNA Exchange Portal was created to provide jurisdictions with tools and resources to assist in compliance with the SORNA requirement to provide information across jurisdictions about sex offenders who are relocating between jurisdictions or who are required to register in more than one jurisdiction.
• The 2008 National Symposium & Workshop on Sex Offender Management and Accountability was held July 30–August 1 in Baltimore, Maryland.
• On December 1, the SMART Office launched the redesigned NSOPW.gov.

2009

• The SMART Office launched the Tribe and Territory Sex Offender Registry System (TTSORS), created to reduce the technical difficulties of implementing SORNA requirements for territories and tribes that have elected to implement SORNA, on January 20, 2009.
• The SMART Office held the 2009 National Symposium & Workshop on Sex Offender Management and Accountability on April 21–23 in Houston, Texas.

2010

• 2010 National Symposium & Workshop on Sex Offender Management and Accountability was held May 18–20, in Portland, Oregon.
• The SMART Office launched the Sex Offender Registry Tool (SORT), a no-cost technology solution that functions as the state-level administrative registry system and provides local registration agencies with their own specialized public sex offender registry websites, in August 2010.

2011

• The Supplemental Guidelines for Sex Offender Registration and Notification were announced on January 1, 2011.
• The SMART Office held the 2011 National Workshop on the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act on January 10–11 in the District of Columbia.
• The SMART Office began work on the Sex Offender Management Assessment and Planning Initiative (SOMAPI) in March 2011.
• In fiscal year 2011, the SMART Office established a new grant program, Promoting Evidence Integration in Sex Offender Management: Implementation of the Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale.

2013

• In fiscal year 2013, the SMART Office established a new grant program, The Campus Sexual Assault Perpetrator Treatment Pilot Project.

2014

• The SMART Office held its 2014 SORNA Workshops at the National Advocacy Center on January 22–23 & February 25–26 in Columbia, South Carolina.
• The SMART Office released the NSOPW.gov mobile application in summer 2014.

2015

• Through funding from the SMART Office, DOJ initiated a Tribal Access Program pilot program (TAP) to provide tribes full access to certain national criminal and civil information databases in August 2015.

2016

• The SMART Office held the 2016 National Symposium on Sex Offender Management and Accountability on July 26–27 in Kansas City, Missouri, marking the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Adam Walsh Act.

2017

• The SMART Office updated the SOMAPI Report in March 2017.

2018

• The SMART Office hosted the 2018 SORNA Workshop.
• In fiscal year 2018, the SMART Office established a new grant program, Keep Young Athletes Safe.
• The SMART Office hosted a series of four International Megan’s Law regional meetings in Detroit, Phoenix and Tampa to discuss the international tracking of registered sex offenders in June and July 2018.

2019

• The SMART Office hosted the 2019 National Symposium on Sex Offender Management and Accountability on July 18–19 in Chicago, Illinois.
• The SMART Office updated the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website in July 2019, with improved searching capabilities and a new look and feel.
• In coordination with the Department of Justice’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, SMART established a tool that gives tribal governments participating in TAP the ability to directly input data and gain access to the FBI’s National Sex Offender Registry using SMART’s Tribe and Territory Sex Offender Registry System.

2020

• In May, the SMART Office launched an updated website at www.smart.ojp.gov, which included a new structure and refreshed branding.
• SMART released the second edition of the Guide to SORNA Implementation in Indian Country.

2021

• On July 27, the SMART Office marked the 15th anniversary of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
• The SMART Office launched a monthly webinar series to provide technical training and assistance on SORNA implementation to sex offender registration personnel.