NIEM Newsletter
NIEM Conformance Tool Available
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Program Management Office (PMO) announces the public release of the NIEM Conformance Tool, intended to assist developers by automatically identifying potential locations of nonconformance within Information Exchange Packet Documentation (IEPD) artifacts (including schemas, metadata, catalogs, and XML). The tool uses the latest published NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR) 1.3 and associated IEPD specifications. It is currently available for evaluation and feedback and does NOT guarantee or certify full NIEM conformance. Therefore, it should NOT be considered an authoritative source for NIEM conformance.
NIEM schema developers can upload an IEPD, a set of schemas in a zip file, or an individual schema and receive a report identifying any NIEM NDR rules that have been violated. The uploaded files and the report are stored online in a user-created account workspace and can be deleted at any time.
The NIEM Conformance Tool is a dynamic work in progress and will remain so in the near future. It will improve weekly as new auto-check rules are added and as user feedback and policy changes are addressed through refinements of its user interface and capabilities. The current tool automatically checks 78 out of about 180 NDR rules. Release of the NIEM Conformance Tool now, before its completion, assumes that partial automatic conformance validation is preferred to a completely manual interpretation and application of the NIEM NDR. The NIEM PMO believes that the tool can provide incremental value to the community while at the same time allowing valuable feedback to guide further tool improvements and progress.
For a given IEPD or schema set, NDR rules that auto-pass, auto-fail, or require manual review are clearly labeled in the resulting spreadsheet validation report. The user is responsible for interpretation of the NIEM NDR and for performing the remaining manual checks. As auto rules are added, fewer manual checks will be necessary. Nonetheless, rule dependencies can result in rule failures in schemas and IEPDs that passed earlier validation runs. Therefore, to keep pace with tool changes, users are advised to read and follow the instructions in the tool carefully. Further, users should understand that no software program will ever automatically validate all rules in the NIEM NDR. For example, the tool cannot auto-check subjective rules such as the validity of component definitions and semantics.
The NIEM Conformance Tool also checks some of the requirements that are listed in the document Requirements for a NIEM IEPD Specification. The document identifies baseline business requirements for IEPDs and outlines artifacts and metadata that should be included to satisfy those requirements. The tool will review the metadata.xml and catalog.html files of an IEPD and report whether these baseline requirements have been satisfied.
A number of user interface enhancements and capabilities are already planned for the next several months, including:
- Indicate line number of non-UTF8 characters, preferably before validation is allowed.
- Automatically fix a few non-UTF8 character errors, such as smart quotes.
- Put the date the Conformance Tool was last updated into the output report.
- In a user's "My Validations" section, flag output reports that are out of date.
- Handle XML DOCTYPE declarations.
- Allow users to run conformance checks for IEPDs already stored in a user's workspace (integration of Conformance Tool with the IEPD Tool).
- Attempt to provide some warnings of areas of nonconformance for some of the manual rules.
The NIEM Conformance Tool is available from the "tools" menu at http://www.niem.gov/. Feedback, suggestions, and suspected bugs/errors are welcome and encouraged from the user community; these should be submitted to the National Information Sharing Standards Help Desk.
Note: Several other NIEM tools are available at http://niem.gtri.gatech.edu/niemtools/home.iepd to help developers search and navigate the model, map information exchanges, build schema subsets, work with IEPDs, and generate code list schema. These tools were covered in detail in the April 2009 issue of NIEM News.
NIEM Case Study: NIEM-GJXDM for New Jersey Law Enforcement Information Sharing
Synopsis
Two projects in New Jersey are actively using and/or developing the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) standards for the sharing and processing of data. The New Jersey Data Exchange (NJ-DEx) project is a key initiative for sharing information both horizontally and vertically in the New Jersey law enforcement community. With similarities to the N-DEx program in structure and intent, NJ-DEx is now delivering previously unprecedented cross-jurisdictional data sharing capabilities in New Jersey. Another project is NJ-CrimeTrack, a system that supports the New Jersey Governor's new crime plan, "A Strategy for Safe Streets and Neighborhoods."
Agency Overview
The collaborative information sharing effort is led by the New Jersey State Police; the agency has 3,000 officers and 1,500 civilians and core functions that include general police services, general highway and traffic enforcement, statewide investigation and intelligence services, emergency management, support for state and local law enforcement efforts, maintenance of criminal records and identification systems, and regulation of certain types of commerce.
The New Jersey State Police operates the NJ-DEx system and database and performs design and software development. There is active collaboration with the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness for funding, project support, and project management and in building relationships statewide.
Challenge
New Jersey has more than 500 law enforcement agencies. Agencies in the state have realized that there is a regional basis both for where crimes occur and how they are solved, which necessitates improved ways of sharing information among the many individual agencies. New Jersey is a home-rule state; therefore, no centralized technology can be dictated to the local agencies. As a result, there is a hugely diverse collection of platforms for records management systems (RMS), computer-aided dispatch (CAD), and information sharing query systems.
Solution
New Jersey began using a standards-based approach to tackle information sharing challenges. Beginning with GJXDM and then incorporating NIEM, the state was able to accommodate many different industry solution providers fairly. New Jersey created an Information Exchange Package Document (IEPD) and a set of Data Sharing Extract Guidance rules to help facilitate the exchange of data (consisting mostly of CAD and RMS excerpts) for the Statewide Master Name Index called NJ-DEx. NJ-CrimeTrack v1.0 was developed to assist in tracking shooting information in support of the Governor’s crime plan, "A Strategy for Safe Streets and Neighborhoods."
Results
Implementation of NJ-DEx is under way. It is in production, serving a user base of more than 20,000 law enforcement personnel across New Jersey. Additional counties are developing their extracts and will be expanding the base of data sharing partners throughout 2009 and 2010. CrimeTrack v1.0 will continue to be used and analyzed in support of the Governor's strategy and, in the near future, CrimeTrack 2.0 will be delivered. The new version will have expanded data exchange capabilities for monitoring gang members and gang-related incidents.
| Register Today for the NIEM National Training Event Registration for the 2009 NIEM National Training Event is available online, via fax, and by mail. Please visit the event Web site for access to all available information on this event, including online registration, track descriptions, and hotel information. If you have any questions on the 2009 NIEM National Training Event, please send an e-mail to information@niem.gov. |
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NIEM Case Studies and Success Stories
NIEM News is seeking NIEM adoption and use case studies and success stories. The case studies are simple, two-page write-ups that focus on the challenge, the solution, and the results of the project. We are also seeking success stories based on NIEM exchanges—exchanges that resulted in lives being saved, criminals being arrested, and the like. These stories may be highlighted at the upcoming NIEM National Training Event in Baltimore, Maryland. To look at a number of case studies that have already been posted in final form on the NIEM Web site, please visit http://www.niem.gov/library.php#case. Please send your NIEM adoption and use ideas, contributions, and success stories to Andrea Walter at andrea.walter@ijis.org.
Featured FAQ: How Do I Use NIEM to Build Information Exchanges?
The NIEM IEPD life cycle has six steps:
- Conduct Business Analysis and Requirements Review: This step defines the business requirements associated with an information exchange for which NIEM is used. It incorporates scenario-based planning, which is the recommended methodology for elaborating the business context of events, incidents, or circumstances in which information exchange takes place.
- Complete Information Exchange Mapping and Data Modeling: This uses established methodologies to map and model operational information exchanges. Moreover, it describes the process a community of interest (COI) follows to map its data sources to NIEM and identify IEPDs available for reuse and/or gaps between its data source and NIEM. COIs can use the NIEM repository to search and discover existing data components to decrease the time needed to construct IEPDs.
- Build and Validate IEPDs: This step addresses the importance of using common documentation standards, such as IEPDs, to ensure that there is consistency in the way information is captured, stored, and exchanged and that uniform methodologies exist to support the generation of the IEPDs. Once the COI validates its IEPD, it may submit the IEPD to its domain-specific area (proceed to Step 5) or nominate data components for inclusion into universal or common (proceed to Step 4).
- Data Harmonization and Promotion: The appropriate NIEM governance stakeholders form a team to review an IEPD submission and determine whether any of the data components should be included in universal or common. The team evaluates the submission and makes a recommendation regarding which, why, how, and when to integrate the proposed changes into NIEM.
- Publish and Implement IEPDs: Once an IEPD is approved, it is stored in the NIEM repository. Other stakeholders or COIs can then search and discover published IEPDs for reuse or extend for a specific instance of the information exchange.
- Garner Feedback and Enhance and Expand IEPDs: This step describes how the COIs work with the NIEM Program Management Office (PMO) to ensure existing IEPDs remain up to date and compliant with NIEM.
NIEM Training News and Events
NIEM Practical Implementer's Course—Ashburn, Virginia
A NIEM Practical Implementer’s Course was held on April 14–16, 2009, in Ashburn, Virginia. The instructors for this training engagement were Sudhi Umarji and Priscilla Walmsley. The class was well-received based on the student evaluations.
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
| September 30–October 2, 2009 | NIEM National Training Event, Baltimore, Maryland Save-the-Date Flyer | Register Today |
