NIEM Newsletter
Status Report on Biometric Standards and NIEM
By Gerry Coleman, Director, Crime Information Bureau, Wisconsin Department of Justice
What does the criminal fingerprint imaging business have in common with the transportation, banking, chemical, electrical, mining, office products, and textile industries? It uses, in part, their 1980s-style messaging format—the ANSI X.12 Electronic Data Interchange. And while X.12 has evolved to embrace XML formatting, the ANSI-NIST-ITL 1-2007 Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Other Biometric Information continues to use numeric tags and FS, GS, RS, and US record, field, and subfield separator characters. The April 2007 version of this standard is structurally equivalent to the first version published in 1986.
A Path to NIEM?
Given the hundreds of AFIS and livescan fingerprint capture systems in operation today, there are many who would applaud an enduring standard. Nevertheless, XML is upon us, and NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory (NIST-ITL) has agreed to append “Part 1” to the name of the April 2007 standard. NIST-ITL has also agreed to promote the development of a “Part 2” version that would use XML formatting. At a September 18, 2007, workshop hosted by NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland, attendees voted to accept a proposal outlining an XML version of the standard that conforms to the production version of NIEM 2.0 (released July 31, 2007).
A full Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) will be developed and published by the end of this year. NIST will then expose the proposal to the ANSI canvass procedure ending up with, we hope, an official XML version of the standard. You can participate in the process by signing up at http://fingerprint.nist.gov/standard.
The XML Workgroup
Like NIEM, the XML proposal has been a couple of years in development. A snapshot of the history is published at http://www.doj.state.wi.us/les/NIST-ITL. This site includes the technical detail of the current proposal as well as earlier proposals, issues, discussion, and comment.
About 30 representatives from industry and government participated in the process. The workgroup objectives did not change much over the entire process:
- Map all the elements in the “conventional” specification to XML counterparts, adding structure perhaps, but not content.
- Preserve backwards compatibility.
- Conform to NIEM (originally GJXDM).
- Build an IEPD set.
- Define a NIST-ITL namespace for extension elements.
- Work with NIEM to ensure long-range compatibility and to recommend content to be added to NIEM.
Producing a proposal that conforms to NIEM 2.0 was reasonably easy because of efforts by the FBI’s Patrice Yuh. On NIEM’s NBAC, he convinced the committee and the engineers at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to include an “ANSI-NIST” namespace in the NIEM 2.0 specification. This schema file, officially a part of NIEM, contains 90 percent of the data elements needed to implement the Interchange specification.
The Standard
Although commonly called a fingerprint standard, the Interchange specification includes a place for facial images; photos of scars, body marks, and tattoos; signature images; fingerprint minutiae detail; palm prints; iris images; an encapsulated CBEFF record; and user-defined text data and test images.
Records are categorized by type as follows:
- Type 01: Transaction information
- Type 02: User-defined text
- Type 03: Fingerprint image, low-resolution grayscale
- Type 04: Fingerprint image, high-resolution grayscale
- Type 05: Fingerprint image, low-resolution binary
- Type 06: Fingerprint image, high-resolution binary
- Type 07: User-defined image
- Type 08: Signature image
- Type 09: Finger or palm minutiae data
- Type 10: Facial, scar, mark, or tattoo image
- Type 13: Latent finger or palm print, variable resolution
- Type 14: Fingerprint image, variable resolution
- Type 15: Palmprint image, variable resolution
- Type 16: User-defined test image • Type 17: Iris image
- Type 99: CBEFF biometric data
In addition to creating a structure for holding data, the standard sets strict guidelines for image capture equipment, best practices for image capture and compression, and image quality scoring. The standard provides nonproprietary mechanisms for fingerprint feature coding and facial feature coding.
The XML Proposal
The workgroup’s proposal for a “Part 2” XML representation of the Interchange standard retains the strong “record typing” that has been a feature of the conventional standard for more than 20 years.
Three record elements are proposed:
The first is record Type-01, the second is record Type-02, and the last is an abstract substitution group that serves as a placeholder for all records Type-03 through 99.
The proposal also retains all of the conventional standard’s data values. “TA” is still the coded value for the fingerprint pattern tented arch.
The proposal differs from the conventional standard in a number of ways:
- Of course, the records and all data fields have XML tags that conform to NIEM naming convention. There are no more EDI-style numeric field tags or field mnemonics.
- Within a record, the ordering and structure of the data fields (elements) are different.
- There are no longer any “binary” data fields. Every character in an XML instance package will be ASCII text.
- Similar to the conventional standard, image data will be embedded in each record, but it will be represented using Base64 encoding.
Conclusion
A couple of technical problems with the schema in NIEM’s “ANSI-NIST” namespace file need to be resolved, and we have a couple of months of technical writing to create the text version of the “Part 2” specification. Assuming that all of the material can be arranged for publication early in 2008, the ANSI canvass process can begin soon thereafter.
The canvass process allows for comments and challenges, resolution, and republication. I think we have done our homework soliciting broad participation on the workgroup and educating those who need to know. (Knock on wood) I do not think we will have a difficult time with challenges to the proposal. Even at best, it will take several months before the “Part 2” version of the standard can be declared an official standard. June 2008, anyone?
The FBI is already at work constructing an XML version of the text content that goes in the Type-02 record. I expect that we will see an XML version of their Electronic Biometric (formerly Fingerprint) Transmission Standard in 2008.
NIEM Executive Briefing Webinar
On Wednesday, November 14, 2007, a NIEM Executive Briefing will be offered as a Webinar. This briefing will provide an overview of the NIEM program and will describe the data model and its components. It will also provide an overview of the current NIEM domain, NIEM program accomplishments, the current status of the NIEM model, and the state of NIEM adoption and use, and we will delve into future plans for NIEM. A major focus of the session will be the value of NIEM and how it leverages and expands the successes of standards-based information sharing. Participants will learn about the NIEM governance structure and how to successfully get involved with NIEM. The changes and improvements made to NIEM via Release 2.0, also known as the Harmony release of NIEM, will be discussed. The session will end with an update on the availability of NIEM tools and resources and a brief look to the future of NIEM.
To register, send your name and e-mail address to Ms. Shelby Glover at sglover@iir.com. Prior to the call, you will receive an e-mail notification of the conference call, dial-in instructions, and Web site address for the Webinar. Program content questions should be directed to Ms. Eileen Rixmann of the IJIS Institute at (703) 726-3681 or Eileen.Rixmann@ijis.org.
REMINDER: NIEM Familiarity and Usage Survey
Please take a few moments to complete the following survey: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e25jkykpf5mrlies/start. The survey is designed to provide the NIEM leadership team with an estimate of the number of agencies and organizations familiar with NIEM.
REMINDER: NIEM Fellowship Program Applications Due October 22, 2007
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Program Management Office (PMO) is selecting staff members to serve the three primary operational committees that comprise the core governance of NIEM. A fellowship will be offered to selected individuals to provide senior management support for the NIEM Business Architecture Committee (NBAC), the NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC), and the NIEM Communications and Outreach Committee (NC&OC). Applications for the NIEM fellowship program are due on October 22, 2007. Each application should include a résumé of the candidate and a cover letter indicating the willingness of the candidate’s employer to agree to the sabbatical and temporary employment of the individual by the IJIS Institute. For more information, contact Donald Gabbin at donald.gabbin@ijis.org. Applications including résumés and salary requirements should be submitted electronically to David.Fredenburgh@ijis.org. The fellowships will be awarded by November 10, 2007, and all applicants will be notified of the awards within five days.
Global Justice Information Sharing Users Conference
The Global Justice Information Sharing Users’ Conference brought more than 300 stakeholders to the Chicago, Illinois, area during the week of August 20–23, 2007, to learn more about the most recent advances in information sharing. Sessions on both the Global Justice Extensible Markup Language (XML) Data Model (Global JXDM) and the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) were well received by those who attended the conference and are available for review. For more information on this year’s conference and a list of all the conference’s presentations, please see the full article.
Upcoming NIEM Trainings
Other upcoming NIEM trainings include:
October 22–26, 2007: New York State
November 26–30, 2007: State of Minnesota
December 10–14, 2007: State of Connecticut Judicial Branch
For further information or questions about NIEM training, please contact training@ijis.org for further information.