The FMCSA, AAMVA, and Mexico's General Directorship of Federal Motor Carrier Transportation (DGAF) established access to Mexican commercial driver records for CDLIS. Mexican Access is a combination of a bridge to Mexican commercial driver's license records and a file of convictions on Mexican commercial drivers. The CDLIS transactions supported by Mexican access are the Driver Status Request, Driver History Request, Report Out-of-State Conviction, Negate Out-of-State Conviction, Report Out-of-State Withdrawal, and Negate Out-of-State Withdrawal. FMCSA is responsible for managing the Mexican Access within the U.S.
The Mexican Licencia Federal Information System (LIFIS) includes direct electronic connection among Mexico's field licensing offices and the headquarters office, central issuance of a more secure and tamper-proof Licencia Federal de Conductor (LFC) document, and real time data entry and information retrieval. The Mexican Access bridge serves as a portal between the CDLIS and LIFIS applications, mainly by reformatting queries and responses between the two systems, and by simultaneously providing language and equivalency translations. From the CDLIS point of view, the bridge provides access to commercial driver's license records in Mexico at the Mexican jurisdictions via LIFIS.
Not all conviction records are available directly from Mexico, so a file at the bridge stores U.S. applied convictions. A response to an inquiry may contain a combination of Mexican data and data from the conviction file.