Commercial Driver's License Information System

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Commercial Driver's License Information System

Mandated by the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act 1986,(CMVSA) CDLIS helps control issuance of Commercial driver's license (CDLs) by the jurisdictions. Commercial Driver's License Information System is to keep a record of each driver nationwide and help ensure only one driver license and one record for each driver through the cooperative exchange of commercial driver information between jurisdiction and States.

CDLIS has operated in all 51 U.S. jurisdictions (50 states and the District of Columbia) since April 1, 1992. As of April 1, 2004, there were more than 11.5 million Master Pointer Records on CDLIS, growing at an average rate of nearly 40,000 new records per month.

[edit] The System

CDLIS consists of a Central Site, managed by Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and located in Plano, Texas. The Central Site houses the CDLIS pointers and identification data about each commercial driver registered in the jurisdictions, such as: name; date of birth; Social Security Number; State driver license number and AKA information.

This information constitutes a driver's unique CDLIS Master Pointer Record (MPR). When a jurisdiction queries CDLIS to obtain information about an applicant prior to issuing a CDL, the CDLIS Central Site compares data provided by the State Of Inquiry (SOI) against all MPRs in CDLIS. If one or more matches are returned, then the CDLIS Central Site "points" the SOI to the State Of Record (SOR), where more detailed information about the driver's commercial driving history is found.