What is NIEM?
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is a Federal, State, Local and Tribal interagency initiative providing a foundation for seamless information exchange. NIEM is a framework to:
- Bring stakeholders and Communities of Interest together to identify information sharing requirements in day-to-day operational and emergency situations;
- Develop standards, a common lexicon and an on-line repository of information exchange package documents to support information sharing;
- Provide technical tools to support development, discovery, dissemination and re-use of exchange documents; and
- Provide training, technical assistance and implementation support services for enterprise-wide information exchange.
NIEM was launched on February 28, 2005, through a partnership agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and signed by Chief Information Officers.
It leverages the data exchange standards efforts successfully implemented by the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global) and extends the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) to facilitate timely, secure information sharing across the whole of the justice, public safety, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, and homeland security enterprise.
NIEM complies with the Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-5) , which assigns the Secretary of DHS the role of principal federal official for domestic incident management. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 charges the Secretary with the responsibility for coordinating Federal operations within the United States to prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. Building on this are a series of Executive Orders, which direct U.S. Government organizations to strengthen the sharing of terrorism information between organizations and appropriate authorities of states and local governments, and to protect the ability of organizations to acquire additional such information.
