NIEM Newsletter
The NIEM Program Management Office Announces the Release of Suspicious-Activity Report Sharing Tool for Local and State Agencies
Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Program Management Office has announced the release of the Suspicious-Activity Reporting Exchange Standard for Local and State Entities, sponsored and funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The SAR for Local and State Entities Information Exchange Package Document (IEPD) contains artifacts that aid technologists in the creation of “all-crimes” and “all-hazards”-focused system interfaces between and among fusion centers, law enforcement agencies, and public safety personnel.
A complementary functional specification and an associated IEPD are also being announced by the Program Manager of the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) to facilitate the sharing of terrorist-related suspicious activities between and among the state-designated fusion centers and their federal Information Sharing Environment (ISE) partners. This ISE-IEPD contains directly aligned and jointly created artifacts intended for sharing suspicious activities vetted as having a potential terrorist nexus.
State and major urban area fusion centers and their local, state, and tribal information sharing partners can now share SAR information in a universally adopted and reusable manner while fully maximizing their technology, financial, and human resources. 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 (http://www.it.ojp.gov/iepd/), and any questions about justice data-sharing standards can be answered via a live person or robust knowledge base at www.it.ojp.gov/NISS/helpdesk.
Consistent with BJA’s tenets of supporting local control and encouraging collaborative partnerships, the Local and State SAR IEPD was built and endorsed by a community of diverse local, state, and federal agency experts complemented by neutral industry representatives from the IJIS Institute. Given the national significance and enormity of this effort, as well as the need to enable quick and widespread adoption, BJA utilized the expertise of IIR, SEARCH, and the IJIS Institute to manage, coordinate, develop, and publish the SAR for Local and State Entities IEPD. In the end, more than 51 individuals representing 28 unique agencies, seven firms, and three nonprofit organizations were directly involved in the development of the BJA-sponsored Local and State SAR IEPD.
The results of this effort contribute to, and conform with, the Counter Terrorism Information Sharing Standards (CTISS) Functional Framework and directly support the National Strategy for Information Sharing released in October 2007 and the guidelines contained in the December 16, 2005, Presidential Memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies in accordance with section 1016 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
Secretary Chertoff Emphasizes Information Sharing and Praises DHS's Effort
In a speech to the DHS Law Enforcement Shared Mission Community Conference, Secretary Michael Chertoff took the time to recognize the important work of the Office of the CIO in DHS in promoting information sharing. He noted that “enterprise data management is an essential ingredient of an effective information sharing program, and the work of OCIO, and in particular Donna Roy, deserves recognition. It is not every day that we receive an award from a fellow federal agency, after all. Congratulations to OCIO and the National Information Exchange Model Team for receiving the Department of Justice’s Leadership Collaboration Award for their work on data management.”
Donna Roy is Director of the Enterprise Data Management Office at DHS and is also the DHS executive in the NIEM Program Management Office. We are delighted with this recognition of her efforts on behalf of NIEM.
Secretary Chertoff also said in the same speech that “information sharing is at the core of what we do every day across all of our components and with our federal, state, local, and private sector colleagues. We must remember that no component owns the data in its care, and each has a responsibility to provide it to others for appropriate use in fulfillment of our counterterrorism, homeland security, and law enforcement mission. We are poised to make important strides this year on information sharing. I urge components to work aggressively to refine our policies, business processes, and programs and to identify systems and datasets that should be shared more broadly. Keeping in mind the tenets of protecting information from misuse and adhering closely to privacy and civil liberties laws and guidelines, I expect you and your colleagues in all components to work hard to achieve our information sharing goals. Thank you for your work this year towards that end.”
Upcoming NIEM Training
Other upcoming NIEM trainings include:
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February 11–15, 2008: Ashburn, Virginia—scheduled for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Criminal Justice Information Service Division
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February 25–29, 2008: Salt Lake City, Utah
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March 17–21, 2008: Ashburn, Virginia—national training (open to the public)
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March 24–28, 2008: Houston, Texas
For further information or questions about NIEM training, please contact training@ijis.org for further information.