NASCIO Releases Brief on National Information Exchange Model

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), which represents the chief information officers (CIOs) of the states, released a brief on the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), which promises to be one of the most significant enablers of governmental collaborative information exchange. The brief, A National Framework for Collaborative Information Exchange: What is NIEM?, both summarizes the intention of this national initiative and provides guidance on participation in this effort.

The NIEM initiative is in its beginning stages but is already anticipated to be a major breakthrough initiative, which will have a tremendous impact on how government interoperates with the intention of making possible the communication among government lines of business at all levels of government.

"This initiative is a tremendous undertaking and requires the collaboration and cooperation of all our federal, state, tribal and local government partners," said Scott Charbo, Department of Homeland Security Chief Information Officer.

In February 2005 a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), established between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), created the NIEM project. Key to this initiative is the expansion of DOJ's Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) to now include the requirements for sharing information related to homeland security. Today, the vision of NIEM is expanding to include intelligence, public health, and transportation.

"In order to realize the value implicit in cross Government Information Sharing, we must move from separate system-to-system exchanges to a business-driven common data standard vocabulary for all systems involved," said Kshemendra Paul, Chief Enterprise Architect for US DOJ. "NIEM provides an efficient and scalable approach."

NASCIO is leading the charge from state government in representing their interests as NIEM progresses by pulling together officials from state, county and local government to vet the direction and concepts of NIEM. This influence has been actively sought by the NIEM project team led by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

States are asked to participate through NASCIO's representation in support of this effort. The Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded NASCIO a grant in order to enable this involvement. This is referred to as the NASCIO Information Sharing Initiative Grant and NASCIO is using those funds to reach out to state and local government to gain input into the NIEM project plan and to bring back updates on the progress of NIEM.