DHS, DOJ update National Info Exchange Model

The Homeland Security and Justice departments issued a beta version of their National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) June 30, DOJ officials announced today.

NIEM allows federal, state, local and tribal law governments to share information through common standards, DOJ officials said in a statement.

DHS and DOJ participated in creating the standard, along with law enforcement, public safety, emergency and disaster management, and intelligence partners, according to the statement. Private-sector partners also participated.

NIEM currently has seven domains: justice, intelligence, immigration, emergency management, international trade, infrastructure protection and information assurance. It defines a core set of Extensible Markup Language schema terminology and builds on the Global Justice XML Data Model and the Federal Enterprise Architecture Data Reference Model.

The beta release shows significant progress toward improving information sharing according to the president’s homeland security strategy, said Charlie Armstrong, deputy CIO at DHS, in the statement.

NIEM will improve information-sharing across agencies, Justice’s CIO, Vance Hitch, said in the statement. The standard will help major DOJ IT programs including the Litigation Case Management System and Sentinel, the FBI’s comprehensive data-management system.

The official release of NIEM 1.0 is scheduled for October, according to the statement.