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2018 Best of NIEM Award Winners Announced

Winners of the 2018 Best of NIEM awards were announced at this year's annual NIEM Business Architecture (NBAC) meeting in Arlington, Virginia.  The Best of NIEM Awards recognize teams or individuals for going above and beyond in collaborating, demonstrating measurable results, and furthering an efficient and effective government in their use of NIEM.  This year four teams were awarded for:

  • Best of NIEM Overall
  • Measurable Impact and Results
  • Cross-Boundary Collaboration
  • Supporting an Efficient and Effective Government

Best of NIEM Overall was awarded to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) team's collaboration with American Association of Motor Vehicles Administrators (AAMVA) exchange.  The teams collaborated to transform a legacy COBOL driver's license exchange into a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) web service using NIEM conformant data elements to support both motor vehicle and immigration law enforcement requirements.  The majority of AAMVA member states and US protectorates have retire their legacy driver's license interfaces and reused the SOAP web services are based on NIEM conformant data elements, which has modernized their information exchange and significantly reduced maintenance costs.

The U.S. Census Bureau received the award for Measurable Impact and Results for their Decennial Census Metadata Registry.  This team's "System of Systems" or registry consists of over 50 IT systems that communicate through various service buses, file transfers, and protocols across over 100 interfaces that communicate in real-time.  In the 2018 End-to End census test, the response data was completely synchronized across all modes of collection, resulting in 100% conformity of data collection systems. Adopting the Metadata Registry standard, which is based on NIEM Naming and Design Rules has reduced the amount of time and effort required to process response data collected by the multitude of systems.

The Security Equipment Integration Working Group (SEIWG) earned the award for Cross-Boundary Collaboration for their Physical Security Equipment Information Exchange.  Their information exchange package contains a NIEM conformant standard to enable interoperability between SEIWG sensor, detection, monitoring, and control systems within and across the Department of Defense (DoD) and military installations.  Being the first of its kind publicly releasable Physical Security Enterprise & Analysis Group (PSEAG) interoperability standard, it is intended to influence physical security equipment architecture, technical design, and system integration.  Because it is publicly releasable, the standard can be implemented by industry partners who build, design, develop, and deploy physical security equipment for Force Protection Systems and other DoD applications.

The award for an Effective and Efficient Government was granted to the Trusted Information Exchange Services (TIES) Project in partnership with Public Safety Canada and other supporting organizations.  TIES demonstrated a flexible, agile, and adaptable NIEM based information exchange approach that improves security related to user access and release controls.  The team demonstrated improvements in data governance thru increased traceability, information assurance, and runtime monitoring.  Using the NIEM Maritime IEPD, TIES was able to exchange Maritime security information with two other security systems, while simultaneously demonstrating the ability to react to changes in the operational environment such as adding, deleting or modifying access. The TIES data security service complies with the Object Management Group's (OMG) Information Exchange Framework (IEF) Reference Architecture (IEF-RA).

These teams are demonstrating the amazing work that can be done with NIEM.  Congratulations to our winners!