September 16, 2008 

DHS Steps Up to Help Lead the NIEM Program Office 

As one of the members of the Executive Steering Committee for NIEM, I am pleased to 
announce to the NIEM community that as of September 15, 2008, Donna Roy from the U. S. 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will begin serving as the Acting NIEM Executive 
Director. The program has been, and continues to be, a joint DOJ and DHS partnership. In the 
past 12 months, we have seen significant growth in the utilization of the standards in areas 
outside the law enforcement domain. NIEM is also a key piece of the federal government’s 
efforts to share data consistent with the President’s National Strategy for Information Sharing1 
and the 9-11 Act2 passed by Congress in January 2007. 

Donna currently serves as the Director of the Enterprise Data Management with DHS, where her 
responsibilities include formulating the department’s data management and information 
architecture strategy and acting as the lead executive within DHS for the adoption of NIEM. 
She has dramatically increased the adoption of NIEM across numerous DHS investment 
technology programs within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Domestic Nuclear 
Detection Office (DNDO), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement (ICE), National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), Science & 
Technology (S&T), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), U.S. Citizenship and 
Immigration Service (CIS), and the US-VISIT Program. Through her leadership, DHS has 
developed or will develop more than 65 Information Exchange Package Documents (IEPDs), 
standardizing the exchanges between high-impact systems across the DHS mission space. 
With her extensive background in Information Technology Systems, Data Architecture and 
Management, and Geospatial Information Architectures, she is well suited to help lead NIEM 
into the future. 

1http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071031-10.html. 
2Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 (HR 1). 

Jeremy Warren has admirably served as the interim Executive Director since Kshemendra Paul 
moved to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Jeremy will continue to be active in 
NIEM in his ongoing role as the Chief Technology Officer at DOJ. I also want to take this 
opportunity to make sure the NIEM community has seen the latest news on the exciting 
developments with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its development of the UCore 2.0 
standard. See http://www.gcn.com/print/27_20/46900-1.html?page=1. 


Jeremy, Donna, and their teams were instrumental in supporting the DoD in the development of 
UCore 2.0. The involvement of the NIEM program in the requirements, design, and 
implementation of UCore 2.0 ensured its compatibility with NIEM and LEXS. My hope is that 
this impressive effort of standardizing information exchange across four large federal 
organizations will lead to the success of many cross-federal information sharing initiatives for 
many years to come. 

I want to thank the leadership team at BJA, DOJ’s Global members, and especially all the 
practitioners and implementers throughout the country for their continued support and dedication 
to NIEM. I also want to welcome the new DHS CIO, Richard Mangogna, to the Executive 
Steering Committee and thank him for his leadership and support for data standardization across 
the law enforcement and homeland security communities. 

 

Vance Hitch 

Chief Information Officer 

U.S. Department of Justice