CrimTrac to be folded into Australian Crime Commission

The federal government will merge the nation's two law enforcement information-sharing organisations to create a super agency with joint data and analysis capabilities.

CrimTrac and the Australian Crime Commission will become a single entity by July 1 next year, the government said.

CrimTrac provides information-sharing solutions for Australia's police and law enforcement agencies, while the Australian Crime Commission is the country's peak criminal intelligence agency.

Australia's state and territory attorneys-general and police ministers today agreed to combine the two agencies, bringing together law enforcement analysts and cross border information sharing for the first time, federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan said in a statement.

The government also recently announced plans to merge the Australian Institute of Criminology into the Crime Commission.

"This [CrimTrac] merger is vital because our law enforcement and protection agencies need accurate information and intelligence to respond to immediate threats," Keenan said in a statement.

"In this security landscape we must provide ample and instant information that identifies the patterns and associations that can help detect and disrupt significant threats.

"We don’t want to be in a situation where we fail in our duty to protect our nation because terrorists could share information quicker than we could."

Since its arrival in 1990, CrimTrac has delivered Australia's law enforcement agencies capabilities such as a national DNA database, a national ballistics identification system, and more recently, an Australia-wide missing persons matching capability.

It also developed the country's ACORN cybercrime reporting tool, and recently went to market for bids for a national fingerprints database.

As at 30 June 2015, it employed 207 workers.

The Australian Crime Commission is currently working on replacing its ageing ACID national criminal intelligence database to improve intelligence sharing between Australia’s law enforcement agencies.

It also last year completed its Fusion project, a search engine and analytics capability that queries unstructured law enforcement data to provide more effective intelligence to agencies.

It employs around 562 staff, according to its most recent annual report.