NIEM Newsletter
NIEM Gets a Uniform and Takes to the Seas
Since its inception in 2005, the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) has expanded into many new and exciting areas within the justice and homeland security missions. This new strategic growth is a testament to the usability of NIEM and the many people and agencies involved in making NIEM a success. In 2008, NIEM continued to grow across the federal government through two key relationships—Universal Core (UCore) and the Maritime Information Exchange Model (MIEM).
UCore is an interagency information sharing initiative being developed by the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Intelligence Community (IC). The former NIEM Program Management Office (PMO) Executive Director, Jeremy Warren, served as the federal co-lead for the effort, along with Dan Green from the Department of the Navy. Technically, UCore is an information exchange specification and implementation profile that is a functional element of the National Strategy for Information Sharing. UCore includes definitions of the most commonly exchanged concepts (who, what, when, and where), security markings, and XML representations of these concepts. UCore’s extension rules allow for tailoring information exchanges for specific mission areas, and it also creates a messaging framework to package and unpackage the content consistently. The UCore initiative leverages the success of many other DoD, DHS, DOJ, and IC data-sharing efforts.
In August 2008, the NIEM PMO announced that the involvement of the NIEM program in the requirements, design, and implementation of UCore 2.0 ensured its compatibility with NIEM and the DOJ’s Logical Entity eXchange Specifications (LEXS). UCore 2.0 shares the same underlying message structure as LEXS, which creates a substantial functional alignment between the two and allows for greatly simplified translation of messages.
Information exchange partners from across the federal government will not need to view UCore and NIEM as an either/or choice. UCore has been designed to be interoperable with NIEM and LEXS, and current NIEM-based systems will not need to deviate from existing implementations to share information via UCore. The NIEM program is fully committed to ensuring that future versions of NIEM and LEXS will remain compatible with UCore.
Following its successful relationship-building with UCore, on November 5, 2008, the NIEM Program and the DoD Executive Agent (DoD EA) for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) entered into a strategic partnership with NIEM designed to strengthen information exchange for this critical mission area. Under this agreement, the Department of the Navy and the DoD Executive Agent for MDA will work with the NIEM Program to transition the Maritime Information Exchange Model (MIEM) 1.0, developed by the MDA Data Sharing Community of Interest, into NIEM as its maritime information domain component.
MIEM was created as part of the Comprehensive Maritime Awareness Joint Capability Technology Demonstration sponsored by the U.S. Navy and DoD and performed jointly with the Republic of Singapore (ROS). The Department of the Navy worked within the established community of interest, including the U.S. Coast Guard, to ensure that MIEM would meet the maritime community’s requirements for information sharing. The development of MIEM included leveraging significant portions of NIEM and extending beyond NIEM to include maritime-specific elements required for information exchange. The transition of MIEM will allow the maritime community of interest to leverage the tools, training, and governance provided by NIEM at a fraction of the cost.
The NIEM and MIEM partnership furthers the objectives for ensuring that Maritime Domain Awareness situation intelligence is actionable for homeland security and will ensure the long-term stewardship of the maritime model for information exchange. Most important, it provides enabling technology for executing the National Maritime Strategy signed by both DoD (Navy and Marine Corps) and DHS (Coast Guard).
Because of the widespread adoption of NIEM throughout state and local governments, the inclusion of maritime information exchange data components in NIEM offers the potential for much greater information sharing at lower costs to state and local law enforcement and homeland security professionals, who have a need to share information about maritime activities and events. Law enforcement officials at the state and local levels are forging new collaboration efforts with ports and maritime organizations to respond to potential threats in shipping and from suspicious vessels. It is important to create the ability to facilitate information sharing across the domains of maritime, law enforcement, and intelligence—which is the fundamental purpose of NIEM—not just for counterterrorism activities but also for exchanging information related to smuggling, drug interdiction, and other criminal behavior.
Law enforcement agencies having jurisdiction over ports, inland waterways, bridges, and other connections to maritime environments realize that the ability to share information about the locations, crews, characteristics, and contents of vessels is critical to preventing crime or acts of terror, as well as investigating criminal activity. The magnitude of information sharing that is needed to support collaborative efforts among local, state, and federal agencies requires high-speed, automated systems and a standard for computer-based information sharing across domain boundaries. Having the maritime domain as a part of NIEM will expedite information sharing and increase its efficiency.
Special thanks to the following for help in the development of this article: Dan Green, U.S. Navy, Federal Co-lead (DoD) UCore V2.0 Development and Implementation, and Anthony Hoang, DHS OCIO/Enterprise Data Management Office.
NIEM Case Study
Vermont Judiciary Consolidated Courts Management System (VCase)
Synopsis
The Vermont Judiciary operates with a case management system that is almost 20 years old, and the baseline code has been copied into each county over the years. The Judiciary has a project under way to purchase and convert to a modern, centralized, Web-based case management, document management, and e-filing system to support all courts in the Judiciary. The RFP for the new system, called VCase, was posted in June 2008, with the objective of starting work on the new system in mid-2009. The RFP requires that all exchanges in VCase be NIEM-compliant. In addition to working with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) on standards for the RFP, the VCase project team has started to get up to speed with NIEM training, as well as doing a second Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM) analysis.
Agency Overview
The Vermont court system consists of seven state courts—the Supreme Court, the Superior Court, the District Court, the Family Court, the Probate Court, the Environmental Court, and the Vermont Judicial Bureau.
The State of Vermont Judiciary’s current case management systems are all based on the original text-based Vermont Automated Docketing System (VTADS). VTADS has worked well, but its decentralized configuration and nonnormalized data structure does not allow for viewing data on a statewide basis. It does not easily provide court statistics or management reports, nor does it easily meet data requests from other state agencies.
The Judiciary has a very small information technology (IT) staff of only seven programmers and network staff who support approximately 350 Judiciary system users statewide.
Challenge
To overcome the limitations of a dated court case management system with a wide variety of business practices throughout the state, the Judiciary has a project under way to purchase and convert to a modern, centralized, statewide, Web-based case management, document management, and e-filing system to support all courts in the Judiciary.
As part of the RFP effort, the Judiciary has worked closely with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to help define the objectives of the project. One important objective is that the new system follow national standards. In particular, the Judiciary believes it is important to follow the NIEM standard for all exchanges.
However, at the start of this process in 2007, the Judiciary staff had little experience with Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM), Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM), NIEM, or even eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Upper management assumed that building NIEM-compliant interfaces was as simple as just reworking the current flat-file interfaces with a simple new language; little was known about the JIEM process or tool; in fact, it was assumed that the JIEM tool generated NIEM-compliant XML.
Solution
Vermont Judiciary is currently procuring a case management system and is working to develop a common business model throughout the state. A series of meetings and education and training programs assisted stakeholders in understanding the value and benefits of information sharing standards, including NIEM.
Results
The meetings were an excellent mix of both IT and functional staff from the juvenile docket. Out of these meetings, more than 60 exchanges were identified and then prioritized. The priority list identified nine high-priority IEPDs, which will be completed by the NCSC and Waterhole Software. These IEPDs, which are due to be published to the IEPD Clearinghouse Web site, are Affidavit, Care Order, Case Plan, Disposition Order, Findings and Order, Juvenile Petition, Notice of Appointment, Notice of Hearing, and TPR Petition.
Exchange Modeling has been a significant first step in moving the state toward common business practices. Over the next three years, the Vermont Judiciary is hoping to go from a court-case management system that does not utilize XML to one in which all exchanges are NIEM-conformant. In addition, the Judiciary intends to work with other justice departments in Vermont as they also upgrade their systems to exchange data in NIEM-compliant format.
Featured FAQ: Who Is Currently Participating in NIEM?
Broad-based participation is critical to provide needed vision and effective decision-making direction for NIEM. Representatives from all relevant communities of interest (COI), spanning all levels of government, can participate in NIEM. The current domains in NIEM include justice, intelligence, immigration, emergency management, international trade, infrastructure protection, information assurance, and maritime.
NIEM’s operations are dependent on its stakeholders. Other stakeholders include executives, practitioners, program managers, subject-matter experts, technologists, product developers, academia, standards bodies, sponsors, the media, and private industry, each bringing unique perspectives and contributing important content to the NIEM development efforts. These stakeholders compose the COIs responsible for developing, harmonizing, and managing the data components found in NIEM.
NIEM Training News
NIEM Practical Implementer’s Course—Reston, VA
A NIEM Practical Implementer’s Course was held on January 6–8, 2009, in Reston, Virginia. This session was hosted by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and was attended by 26 students. Course participants included representatives from the U.S. Courts and the Bureau of Federal Prisons, as well as industry representatives. The combination of federal agencies and industry representatives provided the setting for an engaging and informative training session. The instructors for this training engagement were Tom Carlson of Tom Carlson Consulting and Diane Chima-Orji from the IJIS Institute. The class was well-received based on the student evaluations. We thank Tom and Diane for their continued support of the IJIS Institute Technology Training Program.
NIEM Practical Implementer’s Courses are funded through grants from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. For more information about the NIEM Technology Training Program, contact training@ijis.org.
Upcoming Events and Training
- February 10–12, 2009
- United States Coast Guard (USCG), Martinsburg, West Virginia
March 17–19, 2009- Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), Carson City, Nevada
September 30–October 2, 2009- NIEM National Training Event
