At the semi-annual JISP Board meeting in Washington on January 6, 2010, Chairman Maury Mitchell announced he would be stepping down as chairman of JISP.

Maury has tirelessly served JISP and the information sharing community for the last 3 year and has achieved national prominence as a subject matter expert in information sharing at all levels of government. Through Maury Mitchell's leadership, JISP now has over 1,000 members and is active in state and federal information sharing initiatives. Maury is still active as a JISP Board member and in his state as the Director of the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. He also is chairing numerous multistate projects.

At the same Board meeting, I assumed the position of chairman and Gordon Langford became the new vice-chair. With Gordon and help from the rest of the Board, I am certain we can continue to maintain JISP’s position in the community. I come from the practitioner and end-user side of the family.

I am presently Chief of the Essex County (New Jersey) Sheriff's Department where I have worked for the last 10 years. Prior to that, I served 27 years in the Newark (New Jersey) Police Department. Here in the Sheriff’s Office we are leading a county-wide integration effort of data and document sharing for law enforcement.

At the beginning of the year, Jim Pingel also took a position with a private company and Kathy Gattin, a staff member from the IJIS Institute, was assigned to take his place. Additionally, JISP added a liaison from the National Center for State Courts, Paul Embley, to serve in an ex-officio capacity representing the courts.

As the country and our individual regions face some very trying times economically, they also will provide the opportunity for our members to espouse the need to share resources and data exchange. Although it is no easy task, the rewards are great. I believe this will be a reoccurring theme in our industry for some time.

I encourage all of our members to continue to recruit and preach the need for information sharing. We look forward to working with you on joint projects in the future.