NIEM Governance
NIEMOpen, an OASIS Open Project, is committed to building an open, inclusive, productive and self-governing open source community. The community is governed by the NIEMOpen Governance Charter and in accordance with OASIS Open Project Rules with the goal of defining how community should work together to achieve their goals.
NIEM Open is overseen by the following committees:
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Project Governing Board (PGB): Group responsible for the overall lifecycle or business strategy of the project. Oversees activities such as events, marketing, partnerships, promotion, budget, and so forth.
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NIEM Business Architecture Committee (NBAC): A Technical Steering Committee directing the day-to-day activities of the project related to the NIEM Core data model.
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NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC): A Technical Steering Committee directing the day-to-day activities of the project related to NIEM's technical architecture.
Project Governing Board (PGB)
Composition
The PGB must at all times have a chair or two co-chairs. The PGB chair or co-chairs are confirmed annually by the PGB itself via a call for nominations, and if required, a full majority vote of the PGB.
Decisions
For most decisions, the PGB operates by lazy consensus. In addition to the votes required by OASIS Open Project Rules, decisions on the following items require a full majority vote of the PGB:
- Any action or decision that may bind the NIEM Open project to commitments or obligations with any external party or entity, including but not limited to legal, financial, or intellectual property related commitments or obligations
- Promoting work to an OASIS standards track
- Starting or consuming a new project into the OCA
- Endorsements, partnerships, or liaisons with other groups
- Substantive changes to the Governance policies or documents
- The TSC recall procedure
NIEM Management Office (NMO)
Responsibilities
The NIEM Management Office (NMO) Technical Steering Committee (TSC) provides technical and administrative support to the NIEM Open Project Governing Board (PGB) Chair/Co-Chairs and by extension, PGB at large. This includes:
- Administrative & clerical support functions
- Audiovisual support
- Site(s) administration as delegated by OASIS
- Outreach staffing for NIEMOpen sponsorship and new NIEM Domain and new adopter engagement
- Liaison support to NBAC & NTAC TSCs
- Maintenance and creative support of NIEM social media accounts:
- LinkedIn (NIEM Community)
- YouTube (/NIEMConnects)
- Twitter (@NIEM)
- Technical & Management Training support/ staffing
- Technical & Management Training support/ staffing
- Technical Model Support/ staffing
Composition
The NMO must always have a chair or two co-chairs. The NMO chair or co-chairs are nominated by the PGB chair/co-chairs and appointed by the PGB and serve renewable terms.
The PGB delegates the appointment of other NMO voting members to the NMO chair/co-chairs. Voting members are appointed and serve at the discretion of the NMO chairs, ordinarily for a 2-year renewable term.
NMO observers may be admitted to any meeting at the discretion of the NMO chairs.
The NMO is envisioned to be resourced from the chairs sponsoring organization(s) and other volunteers from NIEM Open. The NMO chair/co-chairs have approval authority for all NMO supporting members.
Decisions
For most decisions, the NMO operates by lazy consensus. The following decisions are made by agreement of the co-chairs:
- Appointment of the NMO voting member on the PGB (according to Open Projects Rule 5.1).
The NMO may, at its own discretion, delegate authority on minor decisions to Maintainers in the community.
Decisions on the following items must be made based on a Simple Majority Vote:
- Recommendations to the PGB for change in governance.
Participants
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Katherine Escobar
Katherine Escobar is the PGB Chair and Deputy Division Chief for the Joint Staff’s J6 Data and Services Division.
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Stephen Sullivan
Stephen Sullivan is the NBAC Liaison and is responsible for technical and administrative support to JS J6 DSD.
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Lavdjola Farrington
Lavdjola Farrington is the NTAC Liaison and serves as the Data and Standards Division’s Data Analyst within the Deputy Directorate for Cyber and Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4) Integration (DD C5I), Joint Staff J6.
NIEM Business Architecture Committee (NBAC)
Responsibilities
The NIEMOpen Business Architecture Committee (NBAC) is a Technical Steering Committee within the OASIS Open Project known as NIEMOpen. The NBAC TSC is responsible for identifying the business requirements of NIEMOpen and
- Coordinates, harmonizes, and unifies content as it relates to the NIEM data model and the code-list
- Safeguards NIEM data model core content
- Identifies, validates and on-boards new NIEM communities of-interest focused on establishing new model domain spaces, as well as,
- Advises and supports the Project Governance Board (PGB) on matters relating to business architecture and requirements of NIEMOpen.
Composition
NBAC TSC membership include the NBAC TSC chair/Co-Chairs, NBAC TSC Sub-Committee members, at-large members, NTAC TSC Co-chairs and members, NIEMOpen Maintainers, and NBAC TSC tiger teams. NBAC TSC official members must execute an Individual Contributor License Agreements (i-CLA) and an Entity Contributor License Agreement (e-CLA) if representing a company or agency. The NBAC Chair/Co-Chairs may invite non-member observers and guests to participate in activities on a temporary basis.
Participants
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Kamran Atri
Kamran Atri is the co-founder of A4SAFE, Inc., which provides program management and information technology expertise to public sector clients in the Homeland Security and Defense sectors.
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Thomas Krul
Thomas Krul brings over 20 years' experience in technology and asset management and development.
Get Involved with NBAC
NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC)
Responsibilities
The NTAC is responsible for transforming the business requirements of NIEM into the technical architecture of NIEM Open. This includes:
- All technical specifications
- Conformance of NIEM model artifacts with those technical specifications
- The design (but not the execution) of the NIEM release workflow and artifacts.
- A tool strategy, requirements and desiderata for software tools supporting developers who design NIEM-conforming message specifications and/or implement software that creates or consumes NIEM-conforming messages.
- The adapter, external, and utility schema documents in the XML Schema representation of the NIEM data model.
Composition
The NTAC must at all times have a chair or two co-chairs. The NTAC chair or co-chairs are appointed by the PGB and serve staggered two-year terms, renewable by the PGB.
The PGB delegates the authority to approve other NTAC voting members to the co-chairs in accordance with Open Project Rules and with notification to the PGB. Nominees for NTAC voting members can be submitted by any individual to the NTAC chairs. Voting members serve ordinarily for a 2 year renewable term.
NTAC observers may be admitted to any meeting at the discretion of the NTAC chairs.
Participants
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Jim Cabral
Jim Cabral is the Co-Chair of the NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC).
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Dr. Scott Renner
Scott is a principal engineer at The MITRE Corporation and served as the Air Force representative among the authors of the Net-Centric Data Strategy.
Get Involved with NTAC
Discussions and Announcements
Longer discussions can be taken up on the GitHub Discussions list or via our mailing list.
Discussions are a relatively new feature in GitHub that function like a chat service. You can find the Discussions link next to the link for Pull Requests.
The general mailing list requires that you subscribe before you can send.
General announcements are posted to the general mailing list and may be posted to other communications channels as well.