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NIEM in November: Recap

NIEM hosted its second annual NIEM in November event on Tuesday November 4, 2014. NIEM in November was a half-day event filled with presentations, round tables, and discussions highlighting the community’s hard work and success. Hosted at National Defense University and live-streamed on NIEM.gov, the event had attendees and presenters from across the United States and beyond.

Morning Keynotes

Donna Roy, NIEM’s Executive Director, kicked off the day with an opening address focusing on community. She emphasized that communities coming together to share information is what continues to make NIEM strong.

After Donna’s welcome address, Kshemendra Paul, Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment (ISE), provided insights into Project Interoperability (PI) and other ISE efforts underway. NIEM is a key component of PI, which is a collaborative and transparent start-up guide for information interoperability across all aspects of government and the private sector.

Best of NIEM Awards

Excitement built as Donna and Kshemendra announced the 2014 Best of NIEM awards. State and local teams stole the show, receiving four of the five awards. Click here to read all about the five winners. Congrats to the winning teams!

Nlets and NIEM

Following the 2014 Best of NIEM awards, Frank Minice, Deputy Executive Director, Nlets addressed the implementers in the crowd. With more than 25 states and the FBI using NIEM-based Nlets exchanges—approximately 275,000 outbound NIEM messages each week—the program continues to grow NIEM’s user base. Frank highlighted the 2013 Best of NIEM winner that leverages Nlets—Automated Secure Alarm Protocol—which has improved 9-1-1 response times—first in the City of Richmond, and now across the United States.

NIEM GitHub Launch

Our Sharing Spot—NIEM’s GitHub site—officially launched during the Open Source Collaboration segment of NIEM in November. Christina Bapst, NIEM Communications and Outreach Lead, introduced the segment by reiterating the importance of community involvement. She commented that one of the most important things the NIEM Program Management Office can do is help foster the community and ensure it has the best opportunities for participation and growth. GitHub provides tools and capabilities that allow the community to innovate and have a greater role in the future evolution of the program. The community embraced this new tool, taking to social media to spread the news!

Yannick Twitter

Daniel Morgan Twitter

Cabral Twitter

Scott Renner, NIEM Technical Architecture Committee co-chair, Webb Roberts and Mark Kindl, NIEM Lead Developers, and Kamran Atri, NIEM Emergency Management (EM) Domain Representative walked the community through the GitHub features hosted on Our Sharing Spot. Highlights include:

  • NIEM Implementation Cookbook, a catalog of techniques and methods to help implementers use NIEM
  • NIEM Developer Network, which offers guidance to those developing NIEM Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPDs)
  • NIEM IEPD Library, which promotes reuse by housing IEPDS, templates and more
  • Model Management pilot, which allows anyone in the community to suggest changes to EM domain content.

Thank you to the EM community for agreeing to pilot GitHub for model management—you’re trailblazing the way for others! Do you have feedback on what works well and what could be improved? Let us know @NIEMConnects or here!

NIEM Community Round Table

The NIEM Community Round Table brought together Frank Sisto from the NIEM Maritime Domain, Yannick Asselin from Public Safety Canada, and Mo West from SEARCH to discuss the exciting work our community is doing—both in the United States and internationally. First, Frank gave an introduction to the maritime data strategy. Maritime is packaging commonly used terms together for easier re-use when creating new exchanges. Yannick then provided an in-depth look at NIEM in the international space. NIEM is currently used or being considered by 10* different countries! Finally, Mo provided an inside look at 2014 Best of NIEM winner Pima County, Arizona, Justice-Health Exchange. This award-winning project automated treatment history exchange.

Final Thoughts

NIEM in November’s final panel brought together thought leaders Justin Stekervetz, NIEM Managing Director, David DeVries, Principal Director (Acting), Department of Defense Chief Information Office, Kshemendra Paul, Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment, and Steve Ambrosini, Executive Director, IJIS Institute, to discuss the future of NIEM and information sharing.

When Hudson Hollister, Executive Director of Data Transparency Coalition, who moderated the panel, asked panel members to share their vision for the future, there was one universal theme across the answers—the best is yet to come:

  • Justin commented that international collaboration would continue to shape the NIEM program.
  • David envisions a world where the use of NIEM is universally understood and invisible to users.
  • Kshemendra imagines industry adoption and strategic government information technology procurement for interoperable information sharing solutions.
  • Steve sees possibilities in the mobile space to move big data at the speed of the wire.

Where do you see NIEM’s future? Tell us @NIEMConnects or here!

Thank you to everyone who joined us at NIEM in November 2014! 

Download the presentation slides (in PDF format) here.

*two reported by industry