To ensure public safety and uphold law in the face of threats that have become geographically distributed and increasingly mobile, it is imperative that criminal justice and law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and around the world communicate with each other, sharing critical information as needed throughout all aspects of the criminal justice process. But sharing information across jurisdictional boundaries is fraught with practical challenges at many levels, including both policy and technology. The National Identity Exchange Federation (NIEF) seeks to address this problem.

NIEF is a collection of agencies in the U.S. that have come together to share sensitive law enforcement information. It was created in 2008 as an outgrowth of the Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management (GFIPM) program, which seeks to develop secure, scalable, and cost-effective technologies for information sharing within the law enforcement and criminal justice communities based on the paradigm of federated identity and privilege management. NIEF maintains a symbiotic relationship with GFIPM, leveraging existing GFIPM work products and also serving as a source of real-world feedback to drive the development of new GFIPM work products.