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The NIEM Community

The NIEM Community includes subcommittees and communities of interest (COIs) that represent a large, diverse user base.

Subcommittees

Picture noting the communities that have content in the NIEM model: Justice, Maritime, MilOps, Screening, Surface Transportation, Biometrics, CBRN, CFYS, Emergency Management, Human Services, Immigration, Infrastructure Protection, Intelligence, International Trade, Cyber. Participation in the NIEM community spans federal, state, local, tribal, private sector, and international.

NIEM subcommittees are formally established communities with executive stewards to represent the stakeholders, governance, and data model content oriented around their respective business needs. Subcommittees manage reusable, community-specific content in the model and participate in NIEM governance at large. Each subcommittee represents individuals and organizations that cut across all levels of government, industry, and the international community. Learn more about subcommittee governance.

NIEM currently has data model content for 17 subcommittees. However, depending on business needs and model content, there are opportunities for communities to create new subcommittees in the future. 

Communities of Interest (COIs)

COIs are made up of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or interest in a topic and eventually come together based on the need to exchange information. You do not need to be aligned to a formal subcommittee to use NIEM—you can also be a part of a COI.

COIs collectively define their needs, work with established subcommittees to develop exchange content, and standardize their information exchanges to NIEM. COIs can be composed of multiple subcommittees, a sub-set of a single subcommittee, or not aligned to any subcommittees if they only leverage NIEM’s universal core elements.

How COIs use NIEM depends on their business needs. For example, a multi-faceted issue, such as human trafficking, includes stakeholders from the Justice, Human Services, and Immigration subcommittees. On the other hand, a broadly scoped subcommittee, such as the Maritime subcommittee, could contain multiple COIs such as Coastal Defense, Marine Protection, and Fisheries. If appropriate or necessary, COIs may eventually consider becoming an established subcommittee.

For general NIEM information, visit the About NIEM page.  For more details about the benefits NIEM can bring to your organization, visit the Value of NIEM page.