Success Stories

The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Consular Systems and Technology keeps one of the largest databases in government, growing by two terabytes each month. The office has overcome multiple data exchange challenges in validating identity through using Service-Oriented Architecture carrying NIEM-conforming data exchange services.

By collaborating on a customized toolkit that coached counties on law enforcement best practices, 33 independently run counties in Pennsylvania now use NIEM schema for case management. The result of the Pennsylvania Data Quality Framework Project (DQ2) is an average improvement of 271 percent in data quality.

Four jurisdictions in Virginia (Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax, and Fairfax County) sharing emergency equipment since the 1970s previously determined "closest unit" availability by a series of phone calls between dispatch centers. Using the Northern Virginia CAD2CAD Exchange to connect disparate computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems using NIEM, Safecom, and an RMS message set has cut response time in half.

Workstations with dated software applications were replaced by browser-based access using reusable services and standardized NIEM exchanges. The portal relies on a private cloud to process 1.5 million daily transactions. Single queries returning information from up to 14 data sources now connect the group’s 50,000 users.

State and local law enforcement agencies were using agency-specific IT systems. Over the past five years, the team created the Iowa Criminal Justice Information Sharing (CJIS) Project by adding a Service Oriented Architecture superstructure on top of, in between and separate from these agency legacy systems. Built on the Global Reference Architecture and NIEM, the state set up 24 exchanges, linking more than 100 state and local law enforcement agencies.