NIEM Newsletter
NIEM Committee Updates
With the award of the three Committee Support Manager (CSM) fellowship positions on January 14, 2008, the three NIEM committees have stepped up activities in support of the NIEM Program. Each committee has recently held face-to-face meetings focusing on key program needs and on opportunities to improve support to the NIEM stakeholder community. The following is a summary of each committee’s focus and recent activities.
NIEM Business Architecture Committee (NBAC)
NBAC exists to ensure that the technical solutions that are built as part of the NIEM initiative are derived from and driven by the needs of practitioners to share information across boundaries. NBAC must focus its work on drawing from the field the requirements, use cases, and general needs for improved information sharing.
The NIEM Fellow for NBAC is Jim Pingel of Wisconsin Justice Information Sharing (WIJIS) program, and the committee is cochaired by Phil Letowt of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Linda Rosenberg of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Its core voting membership is currently 14 members, including the two cochairs. The challenge was to establish a core committee that is small enough to efficiently make decisions, yet representative of the broad diversity of domains, levels of government, and skill sets of the agencies and individuals who have a stake in NIEM’s success. NBAC will draw on the skills and experiences of the larger developer and implementer communities for standing subcommittees and ad hoc tiger teams focused on specific challenges or work processes that fall to NBAC.
This core NBAC group will form standing subcommittees and ad hoc tiger teams to engage a much broader cross-section of the NIEM community in addressing the business needs and work processes NBAC must perform.
The following are examples of the work in which NBAC is currently engaged:
A Value Proposition: In engaging both new domains and agencies that have not yet made the commitment to adopt NIEM, it is imperative to be able to express the benefits and cost savings involved in NIEM adoption and implementation. NBAC has assembled a team of practitioners, industry leaders, and academics to create a Value Proposition targeted at helping technologists, managers, and policy makers argue the case for NIEM adoption. This team has collected background information and begun to work on crafting messages and building a framework for quantifying costs, benefits, and returns on investment. The team currently expects to transmit a deliverable within six months for distribution to the community.
Federated Metadata Repository: Several state and federal NIEM participants have expressed business needs to secure all or parts of their published IEPDs in local repositories. NBAC has formed another small team to investigate these business needs and develop a set of requirements for distributed agency repositories to participate in a federated solution, whereby users can remotely search for and discover IEPDs and other metadata stored in multiple secured repositories. These requirements will be passed on to NTAC for review of technical feasibility and possible project formation.
Providing Business Context on NTAC Projects: It is NBAC’s role to maintain the integrity and usability of the NIEM Core through the harmonization and quality assurance processes being considered by NTAC. The two committees will be engaged in discussions on how to implement the business processes necessary to ensure the stability of the NIEM Model, while allowing innovation and adaptability as technology and business needs for information sharing evolve.
NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC)
The NIEM Fellow for NTAC is Pisey Frederick of SAR International, and the committee is cochaired by Jeremy Warren of the U.S. Department of Justice and Tom Clarke of the National Center for State Courts. On April 21–22, 2008, the NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC) met to discuss several NIEM technical issues. NTAC is currently prioritizing and performing a dependencies analysis of artifacts and tasks as they relate to NIEM versioning architecture, quality assurance, and tool strategy and architecture. The following is a high-level summary of NTAC topics addressed at the NTAC face-to-face meeting.
Version Architecture Balanced Approach: The primary goal of the Version Architecture Balanced Approach is to establish a scheme for versioning of NIEM artifacts including namespaces within the XML documents that define NIEM compatibility, version identifiers, and impacts among versioned artifacts. A strong NBAC governance structure is important for cross-domain harmonization processes to address specific needs. The NTAC agreed to the following objectives for the versioning architecture:
- Enabling a domain to publish updates on its own timeline. This allows a domain to accommodate IEPDs for its domain as well as cross-domain IEPDs. This publication is now held up waiting for the NBAC review.
- Ensuring that domain updates are quickly available for use by IEPDs. Updates may be used by IEPDs without being delayed by an update/synchronization/harmonization process.
- Ensuring that domain updates are incorporated into the next NIEM release.
- Providing IEPD developers with an updated schema set that is coherent for increased usability.
- Ensuring that IEPDs have the flexibility to use NIEM components as required to satisfy their business requirements.
- Providing a reliable schedule for (1) the update/synchronization/ harmonization process, (2) minor releases (for domain updates), and (3) major releases (for updates to the NIEM Core).
The versioning approach was approved by the NTAC members, and a detailed technical specification called NIEM Version Architecture will be drafted for further NTAC approval.
Tool Strategy and Architecture: The drafted Tool Strategy and Tool Architecture white papers establish a working action plan to guide, focus, and facilitate the development of software tools and detail the key NIEM processes, users and use cases, interfaces, inputs/outputs, and formats, respectively. NTAC members reached consensus on the updates to the Tool Strategy and Architecture documents based on the accumulated changes. After application of these updates, a combined document called NIEM Tool Architecture will be reviewed, refined, recommended by the NTAC to the NIEM PMO for review, and subsequently published. NTAC seeks NBAC assistance to gather tools requirements, including the desired tool capabilities and prioritization of the tool strategy.
NIEM Quality Assurance Strategy and Plan: This white paper defines the goals, metrics, reviews, and procedures that will improve the quality of the NIEM data model and its artifacts. This document has been approved by NTAC and is submitted to the NIEM PMO for review. NTAC will work jointly with NBAC to determine which steps in the quality assurance process to implement in the future.
NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR) Version 1.3: A new version of the NDR has been drafted for NTAC approval. The next version will provide the rules for NIEM to accommodate conformance targets and add sections on XSD constructs rules. NTAC agreed with the changes for the NDR version 1.3. The revised version will be submitted to the NIEM PMO for review prior to distribution to the public.
CTISS Federated Registry: PM-ISE funded NIEM and DOJ to work alongside DoD to come up with a specification for the federated registry. The specification was finalized in December 2007. The content of the registry will include IEPDs. NTAC will review the specification on technical capabilities, while NBAC will review the CTISS Specification for additional business requirements (e.g., registry, usage, security).
NIEM Communications and Outreach Committee (NC&OC)
The mission of the NIEM Communications and Outreach Committee (NC&OC) is to promote and facilitate NIEM awareness, understanding, enthusiasm, capability, development, implementation, and use. The NIEM Fellow for the NC&OC is Russell Moody of SAIC, and the NC&OC is cochaired by Paul Wormeli, Executive Director, IJIS Institute, and Denis Gusty, Program Manager, Office for Interoperability and Compatibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The NC&OC currently has five priority focus areas—NC&OC membership, NIEM adoption and use tracking, NIEM Speaker Bureau, NIEM training and technical assistance, and NIEM documentation updates.
Membership: The NC&OC is seeking to broaden its membership to include the local, state, and federal stakeholder communities, representatives from each of the NIEM domains, and representatives from the private sector. Members participate in various communications and outreach activities and provide reachback to their organizations and communities of interest.
NIEM Adoption and Use Tracking: Since the release of NIEM 2.0 in July 2007, there has been a groundswell of NIEM-based exchange standards development at the local, state, and federal levels. Broad adoption with collaborative sharing of adoption and use experience, best practices, and lessons learned among NIEM developers is critical for achieving the full potential of NIEM.
NIEM Speaker Bureau: The NIEM Speaker Bureau comprises the people, resources, knowledge base, and processes necessary to proactively identify and engage speaking opportunities, and to effectively respond to speaker requests and support speaking engagements. The Speaker Bureau is intended to ensure the best use of limited resources in reaching out to all NIEM stakeholders and potential stakeholders with an up-to-date, clear, and consistent message about the NIEM Model and the NIEM Program.
Training and Technical Assistance: The NC&OC oversees the NIEM Program Training and Technical Assistance activities. More than 20 training events have taken place or been scheduled for the 2008 calendar year. The course material was recently updated to reflect the latest changes in NIEM architecture and to improve the delivery and continuity of the training overall. The new course was piloted in February, resulting in excellent feedback, and was recently rolled out to a national audience to equally positive reviews. The new material is a culmination of work among many partners over a six-month period. Organizations involved in the development of the new NIEM Practical Implementer’s course include the IJIS Institute (both members and staff), SEARCH, Nlets, and DOJ/BJA. The NIEM Practical Implementer’s course, which now incorporates XML for NIEM concepts, is three days in length and made available upon request to local, state, federal, and tribal agencies.
NIEM Documentation Updates: The NC&OC is updating the NIEM Documentation Plan and assessing the current documentation set to provide a documentation roadmap that will ensure a complete, up-to-date, cohesive set of normative and informative documents, as well as outreach and overview materials.
SAR Selected as Finalist for Intergovernmental Solutions Awards
The Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) program, a national priority exchange based on NIEM standards, has been selected as a finalist for the American Council for Technology (ACT) 2008 Intergovernmental Solutions Awards (ISA). The finalists, chosen by a committee of government and industry IT professionals, represent local, state, and federal initiatives that clearly demonstrate how adopting best practices—from government as well as from industry—leads to measurable improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs.
To qualify, programs had to demonstrate that they met stringent criteria in five categories:
- Intergovernmental collaboration
- Technology leadership and innovations
- Business transformation
- Measurable impact and results
- Availability and replication
ACT selected the SAR program, in part, because it clearly demonstrates how adopting best practices—from government as well as from industry—leads to measurable improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of government. Further, the program was recognized as contributing to extensive intergovernmental collaboration through the active participation of eleven federal, nine state, and five local law enforcement, homeland security, and public safety agencies; seven technology firms; and three nonprofit organizations. NIEM and SAR will be showcased to more than 400 government and industry attendees at the 28th Annual Management of Change (MOC) Conference in Norfolk, Virginia. The winners will be announced at the MOC Conference on Monday, June 9, 2008.
A SAR documents the observation of behavior that may be indicative of intelligence gathering or preoperational planning related to terrorism or criminal activities. SARs are ultimately expected to enable intergovernmental sharing and collaboration among the intelligence, diplomatic, homeland security, defense, public safety, and law enforcement communities to deter and prevent terrorism or criminal activities. The SAR Functional Standard, managed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE), will support the sharing of this information in a manner that protects the privacy and legal rights of Americans. The SAR for Local and State Entities IEPD and its complementary ISE-SAR IEPD were developed conformant to the most current National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) version 2.0 and organized in a manner consistent with version 3.1 of the Law Enforcement Exchange Standard Specifications. Both IEPDs and related information can be found on the IEPD Clearinghouse at http://www.it.ojp.gov/iepd/.
NIEM Business and Outreach Director Recognized as a Fed 100 Winner
Tom O’Reilly, Business and Outreach Director of the NIEM PMO, was recently selected by Federal Computer Week magazine as one of the Fed 100. The Fed 100 are honored annually as "agents of change . . . recognized for their contributions to the federal information technology market in the past year."
O’Reilly was praised for his critical role in helping to build a national Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) system enabling local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to rapidly share and disseminate information about the observation of behavior that may be indicative of intelligence gathering or preoperational planning related to terrorism, criminal, or other illicit intention.
In addition to SAR-related activities, O’Reilly is instrumental in helping state and local governments prepare for NIEM adoption and use. He works closely with the NIEM PMO and other stakeholders to develop and deliver a myriad of training and support programs for state and local governments.
NIEM Case Study: Texas Path to NIEM
Agency Overview
The Texas Department of Public Safety provides public safety services to people in the state of Texas by enforcing laws, administering regulatory programs, managing records, educating the public, and managing emergencies, both directly and through interaction with other agencies.
Challenge
To coordinate the development and operation of justice systems maintained or managed by participating state and local justice entities using the NIEM standards so that these systems are able to share information consistently and accurately in a manner that maximizes the services provided to justice information users in Texas.
Solution
Update the five-year-old Texas Justice Information Exchange Strategic Plan; develop NIEM 2.0-conformant Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPDs) for 28 high-priority information exchanges.
Results
The Texas Department of Public Safety has an updated plan, reflecting its current environment and direction, and it has 28 completed IEPDs ready for system implementation.
Upcoming NIEM Trainings
Upcoming NIEM trainings include:
- June 3–5, 2008: Bismarck, North Dakota—North Dakota Criminal Justice Information Service
- June 17–19, 2008: Clarksburg, West Virginia—FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division
- June 24–26, 2008: Denver, Colorado—Colorado Department of Public Safety
- July 15–17, 2008: Topeka, Kansas
For further information or questions about NIEM training, please contact training@ijis.org for further information.