National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Executive Steering Council (ESC) Meeting U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC October 10, 2008 Attendees: . Bob Boehmer, Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global) . Maria Cardiellos, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) . Ken Clark (representing Clark Smith), Office of the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) . Tom Clark, Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global) . Paul Garrett, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) . Domingo S. Herraiz, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) . Vance Hitch, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) . Richard Mangogna, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) . Patrick McCreary, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) . Justin Murphy, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) . Donna Roy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) . Jeremy Warren, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Meeting slides posted separately—briefing conducted by Ms. Donna Roy. Overview: After introductory words from the four principals, Ms. Roy led the discussion of the state of the NIEM program and the opportunities for NIEM in the future. There is strong commitment from DHS based on the funding provided in FY08 and the endorsement by the DHS CIO Council’s “Gang of 7.” DHS has committed money and staff to implement NIEM within its programs/component and believes that funding for FY09 is more than adequate to meet the needs of the entire community. The ESC members agreed that finding permanent and sustained funding for NIEM was the highest priority, and multiple methods for obtaining a funding commitment from DOJ, DHS, and the Hill were discussed. The group reviewed the level of adoption across government and discussed how much more adoption to expect in the coming years. DHS has more than 35 percent of its large projects using or designing for the use of NIEM. This number will increase to nearly 90 percent in two years. DOJ has seen considerable savings from the adoption of the standard with N-DEx, OneDOJ implementation, and eGuardian. Together, both agencies have seen significant benefits from the adoption of NIEM at the Terrorist Screening Center. At the local level, the group discussed that at least 25 states are using NIEM, and the adoption of the standard outside the law enforcement community is increasing. As an example, New York State’s implementation of NIEM in a variety of domains was cited. This continues to be both a challenge and a positive development because the PMO must satisfy the needs of the core customers, while at the same time providing best practices and tools to noncore customers. Finally, the group discussed the importance of the work the PMO did in the previous year in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD) on the UCore 2.0 standard. This work, led by a small group across DoD, DNI, DHS and DOJ, will allow for interoperability across the intelligence, law enforcement, defense, homeland security, and foreign affairs communities. Success of Ucore was a critical factor for the Maritime Domain Awareness program decision to move its data standards into alignment with NIEM. The harmonization across the four large groups is a significant accomplishment in 2008 and has been the subject of much discussion across the federal CIO community. Decisions: 1. The “acting” designation will be removed from the Executive Director and Deputy Director titles, since the ESC agreed that the leadership of the program was always intended to be rotational. At this point, we are making the planned rotation. 2. The ESC agreed to meet monthly for the next three months to ensure a smooth transition during this change of the administration period. Many NIEM tasks will occur in the next six months, and active ESC participation is needed. 3. The ESC agreed to provide staff to support the rotational tasks as the group positions NIEM for success in the coming years. Tasks to the PMO: 1. Develop a comprehensive funding strategy for the program to ensure its stability in 2010 and 2011. This will include engagement with mission owners in DHS and DOJ as well as needed outreach to the budget, legislative affairs, and appropriations liaison staff within DOJ and DHS. This may also include some targeted outreach by Hitch/Mangogna to the transition team and other senior staffs as plans for FY09 and FY10 are made. 2. Ensure that the NIEM PMO performs a thorough review of the current NIEM Charter and makes recommendations on changes required to ensure program growth and sustainability. 3. Develop an approach for working with external, but noncritical, data standards groups. Discussions include considerations for Health IT and the Next Generation Air Traffic Control groups, which cross multiple domains but are not necessarily within the DHS and DOJ areas of responsibility. Make recommendations on how best to help other agencies without diverting the PMO from its core areas of focus. 4. Continue to work with PM-ISE to best leverage the ongoing work in synch with the efforts to share terrorism data across the intelligence community. There are opportunities for increased use of NIEM at NCTC and TSC, which both work closely with intelligence community agencies. 5. Make a recommendation to the ESC as to whether NIEM adoption at other agencies should be brought up to the full Federal CIO Council. There is a data standards subgroup already, but if Hitch/Mangogna bring it to the full council, it could provide for some direction to the subgroup. Discussion: Opening Comments DOJ—Mr. Hitch: DOJ has already realized many benefits, but there is even more potential with other agencies outside the justice domain. Need to spend time today talking about long-term vision and plans for continuity in the upcoming years. DHS—Mr. Mangogna: One thing he learned on Wall Street, where he did major acquisitions, data exchange is always key to success. Federal regulations prohibited delays, and standardizing data exchange ensured system mergers were done on time. DNI—Mr. Clark: Seeing success in the ISE with NIEM, including the Watch Listing process and the Suspicious Activity Reporting process. DOJ—Mr. Herraiz: Consistency is also his biggest concern, and the ESC needs to find a way to get Congress to fund NIEM. He also wants to find the best way to coordinate NIEM outreach with the efforts under way in Global. Presentation and Discussion Data model is catching on because it is independent of the technology. This focus of technology independence must continue to ensure forward momentum on increase adoption. Ms. Roy also mentioned that the release of version 2.1 will significantly help the customs/international trade domain. We may see many new implementations with the release of 2.1. The group discussed the bell curve on Slide 4 and how the NIEM program is not ready to address the needs of the “late majority” users, who will require both a stronger tools strategy and augmentation of the training approach. This must be factored into the funding strategy for the next two years. Ms. Roy also briefed the group on the positive progress being made with the Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) program. The program’s leadership has verbally agreed to move towards NIEM conformance with its data model, and a MOA is currently under negotiation. This is possible because MDA originally used NIEM as the basis of its models, and the semantic interoperability with UCore also allows existing DoD designs and plans to work with new interfaces/systems. Ms. Roy also provided some details on the 25 of 50 states using some form of NIEM. She committed to working with NASCIO to help move the other 25 towards some usage in their internal systems, in hopes that interfacing with federal systems could happen sometime after that. The group discussed the confusion for the locals, who have numerous standards that DOJ and DHS grants require them to follow. We need clarity to the mandate, and this can come during the crafting of the funding strategy. On Slide 5, the standards are listed. Fortunately, in about 12 months the DHS Geospatial model, UCore, and NIEM will be conformant and therefore will be conformant or interoperable with the remaining. Also on Slide 5, the group discussed the need for continued private sector involvement, especially in the tools and training development. Ms. Roy commented that since the demand for training has increased, the NIEM Program needs to ensure prioritization in filling the training seats for federal, state, and local government employees or government contractors actively sponsored by such. Also, we need to get sharing and data standards into CIO staff performance reviews to ensure the focus on sharing and the technical tools needed to make sharing happen. The group discussed a few short-term budget concerns regarding the staffing of the PMO and the Fellowship Program, the national training event tentatively scheduled for FY09, and the future funding needs to address growth related to HealthIT and NextGen FAA. With these budget concerns, the NIEM PMO will make recommendations to the ESC on the appropriate levels of outreach in the areas outside Justice and Homeland Security to ensure the best use of the PMO resources.