An Audit Report on the Criminal Justice Information System
February 2006
Report Number 06-022
Overall Conclusion
The Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) have made significant improvements to their portions of the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) since the State Auditors Office's December 2001 audit of CJIS (see An Audit Report on the Accuracy of Criminal Justice Information System Data at the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Criminal Justice, SAO Report No. 02-013). However, more improvements are needed at both agencies to ensure that the data in CJIS is complete, timely, and accurate.
Specifically:
- DPS should strengthen and monitor access to its secure Web site so that unauthorized individuals do not have access to confidential criminal history data.
- DPS also needs to perform background checks that are based on fingerprints (instead of just on names) on the users of this Web site before granting them access.
- TDCJ needs to strengthen its approval processes for changes made to its automated systems. It should also develop controls to ensure that programmers do not have access to live (production) data or that their access is closely monitored.
- TDCJ should improve the timeliness with which criminal records for individuals who are on probation are identified in CJIS. To do this, TDCJ should encourage local probation departments to submit updated probation information on a more timely basis.
The disaster recovery planning deficiencies at DPS and the programmers' access to live data at TDCJ were previously identified in the State Auditor's Office's December 2001 audit report on CJIS and remain uncorrected.
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