Crimtrac will be merged into the Australian Crime Commission to form a larger national crime intelligence agency after a meeting of Australia's state and territory attorneys-generals and police commissioners on Thursday. 
The agency would be created by merging CrimTrac and the Australian Crime Commission, and Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan said it was not about cost cutting, but fighting organised crime.
"The merger is not about cutting the costs or the personnel of either agency," Mr Keenan said.
He said the move would allow the commission's agency to work more easily with information on the Crimtrac database.
"Well it's going to operate by making sure that the analysts can access all the data sets within Crimtrac. It's going to operate by making sure we have the most up to date IT platforms so we are feeding information in a real time way," he said.
Mr Keenan has been negotiating with state and territory over the past year over the change and it was recommended by the Commission of Audit.
"What we need to do is bring together the criminal intelligence agents with the information that is contained within Crimtrac. There's been good information sharing in the past but this will be a step froward to make sure our federal police and state and territory police are getting the most up to date intelligence that they can," he said.
The Coalition will put forward legislation to make the merger official iin Parliament next week, an hope to have it finalised by   July 1, 2016. 
Mr Keenan said in   September that the federal government would develop a national facial biometric matching capability at a cost of $18.5 million.
This came under scrutiny at a Senate estimates hearing in   October, with the attorney general's department saying it was possible that Facebook and social media photos could be incorporated into the system.