2022 Best of NIEM Award Winners Announced

Winners of the 2022 Best of NIEM awards were announced at this NIEM's Annual Plenary Session held in Rosslyn, VA on 20 October.  The Best of NIEM Awards recognize teams that have demonstrated noteworthy contributions to the use, growth, and adoption of NIEM.  This year three teams were awarded for:

• Best Implementation of NIEM
• Improving Data Safeguarding using NIEM
• Advancing the Adoption of NIEM

	Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs and U.S. Department of Justice Awarded for: Upgrading the National Prescription Drug Monitoring Program’s PMIX architecture, which uses NIEM 4.0 schema and allows for enhanced requestor identification and security of Electronic Health Record (EHR) exchange integrations.
	NASA Armstrong Research Facility- ARMD Flight Data Portal (AFDP) Project Team Awarded for: Implementing the NIEM Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) schema to assure that data residing in the ARMD Flight Data Portal at NASA is compliant with CUI Marking requirements for both document markings and portion markings, as required by Executive Order 13556.
	Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) – Joint Staff Support Center Awarded for: Producing high quality professional NIEM technical training videos that can be accessed on-demand, which allows more developers and implementers to learn how to use NIEM.

 Detailed Summaries of Each Recipient:

The Best Implementation of NIEM was awarded to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs and U.S. Department of Justice for upgrading the National Prescription Drug Monitoring Program’s PMIX architecture, which uses NIEM 4.0 schema and allows for enhanced requestor identification and security of Electronic Health Record (EHR) exchange integrations. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, RxCheck Hub, used the consensus, national Prescription Monitoring Information Exchange or PMIX architecture to enable the interstate sharing of prescription monitoring data using open, consensus standards to promote interoperability.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) defines a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) as an electronic database that tracks controlled substance prescriptions in a state.  CDC states that PDMPs are amongst the most promising state-level interventions to improve opioid prescribing, inform clinical practice, and protect patients at risk. (https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdmp/index.html)

NIEM and the Global Reference Architecture (GRA) are foundational standards of the PMIX Architecture used in RxCheck.  This architecture requires: 1. Common NIEM exchange data and metadata, 2. Hub connections, and 3. End-to-end security (including encryption key management). 

The 50 RxCheck connected PDMPs (47 states and 3 territories) have upgraded to the new RxCheck 3.0 version, utilizing the latest PMIX standard with NIEM/4.0 IEPD schema providing the RxCheck Enterprise with the latest standards for Electronic Health Record (EHR) exchange. This provides the Hub with enhanced requestor identification and security that places the RxCheck hub at the forefront of Electronic Health Record (EHR) exchange integrations.

NASA Armstrong Research Facility’s ARMD Flight Data Portal (AFDP) Project Team  received a 2022 Best of NIEM award for Improving Data Safeguarding using NIEM. The AFDP project team developed the AFDP Metadata Specification (AMS), which adopted the NIEM Controlled Unclassified (CUI) auxiliary schema as a subcategory of the Security category of the metadata specification.  The NIEM CUI schema is a relatively recent addition to NIEM, created in NIEM 5.0 or late 2020.

Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) is information that requires safeguarding or dissemination controls pursuant to and consistent with applicable law, regulations, and government-wide policies but is not classified under Executive Order 13526 or the Atomic Energy Act, as amended. This release includes metadata tags for approved CUI Categories and Limited Dissemination Control markings found on the CUI Registry  The National Archives website describes the CUI Registry as the Government-wide online repository for Federal-level guidance regarding CUI policy and practice. (https://www.archives.gov/cui)

The AFDP developers created code that renders CUI Document Markings, CUI Portion Markings and implements access rights handling.  The inclusion of the NIEM CUI schema assures that data residing in the ARMD Flight Data Portal (AFDP), at NASA Armstrong Research Facility is compliant with CUI marking requirements.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) – Joint Staff Support Center was awarded the 2022 Best of NIEM award for Advancing the Adoption of NIEM.  This award was for producing asynchronous high quality professional instructor led / independent study courseware for NIEM Message Exchange Package build. These instructional videos can be accessed on demand at https://niem.gov/learn and are free for public use.

The DISA Joint Staff Support Center has significantly improved the educational opportunities for NIEM Message Exchange Package developers and implementers across the NIEM community. They have been instrumental in developing eleven easy to digest instructional videos with extremely relevant examples and exercises that can be delivered in a self-paced virtual environment. 

This team worked tirelessly with NIEM’s primary trainer, Tom Carlson, to produce professional quality video production that enables virtual instruction.  The NIEM Management Office has received positive comments from users taking the course, citing that they appreciate the ability to go thru the content at their own pace.  Users may take the courses anytime, however, if they enroll in a hybrid class, they will also have access to ask the trainer questions at the end of each day. This video training makes learning NIEM more accessible. The amazing professionals within the DISA Joint Staff Support Center can be proud of the contribution the organization has made to the advancement of NIEM.