FAQs
In accordance with ISO 11179, each GJXDM and NIEM tag name consists of several parts:
• Object class term: The object class term represents the specific real-world object to which the property is applicable.
• Property term: The property term is a plain-language summary of the quality that the property represents. Example property terms would include Hair Color, Hair Appearance, and Tax Identifier.
• Representation term: The representation term describes, from a very high level, the form of the data represented. This term is taken from a list of “ebXML” representation terms. Representation terms not on the list are not valid. The point of the representation term is not to specify the exact type of the represented value; It is instead intended to give the person reading the property name a clue as to what the property is for and what it might mean.
The Global JXDM is unique within government as an XML vocabulary that has truly been created from the ground up. Practitioners from a variety of organizations came together to create a data dictionary that would allow the entire justice enterprise to share information with a common structure. This enables exchanges to be built that serve many purposes and eliminates the point-to-point inefficiencies of the past. The success of Global JXDM has standardized many disparate systems across the criminal justice domain and the concept is now being extended on a national level. Global JXDM will continue to operate under the guidance of DOJ Bureau of Justice Affairs (BJA), and NIEM will serve as an umbrella organization with a much larger scope. DOJ Office of the CIO is responsible for NIEM, in partnership with the DHS Office of the CIO.
In NIEM, the Global JXDM is represented in the justice domain. NIEM not only includes the justice domain, but also represents others, such as intelligence and emergency and disaster management. NIEM provides the organizations involved in these domains with the data model needed to create their information exchanges, to create and share information, and to get a head start in implementing its own exchanges. NIEM actively encourages Federal agencies while equally focusing on state and local contributors. This is possible through an emphasis on component-based resources that are reusable and portable to any organization or platform. NIEM will serve as an umbrella for existing domains, such as justice and homeland security, to work side by side in developing information exchange capabilities and ensure that technology will never again be a barrier to the public's safety and well being.
Conceptually, the IEPD lifecycle in NIEM (as defined in the NIEM Concept of Operations) is very similar to the IEPD lifecycle followed by many IEPD developers in GJXDM. The GJXDM lifecycle is documented in the GJXDM Users Guide.
Both lifecycles call for the basic steps of understanding the contextual business scenarios or context of exchange, documenting exchange requirements, modeling the information being exchanged, mapping the information model to GJXDM or NIEM, and building schemas from the mapping. Both lifecycles suggest (the NIEM lifecycle does so explicitly) that IEPDs should be published and registered so that others may find and reuse them.
The NIEM lifecycle references supporting tools that were not available in the GJXDM lifecycle, such as the NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR) and the NIEM Component Mapping Template (CMT).
The GJXDM lifecycle makes more explicit reference to the benefit of logical domain modeling as a way of capturing information requirements that are independent of the XML vocabulary. The domain model represents the requirements that are mapped to GJXDM (or NIEM).
Does private industry mean private professionals in the Justice domain, as differentiated from public ones.
For your specific question, adoption and use by private industry at this time is by service providers and vendors that service the Justice and Public Safety Government marketplace. However, this does include lawyers and law firms that have a requirement to make filings with the Courts. We do expect to do more with private industry. both from the perspective of vendor adoption, and based on NIEM mission stakeholders and their requirements to exchange information with players in the private sector.
Most of these items are current programs, initiatives, and/or groups which are providing support to increase information exchange within the Law Enforcement Community. I've provided a little text to give you some information about each item, there are many documents and additional information that is accessible within each website.
" Information Sharing Environment (www.ise.gov): Information Sharing is a large focus of the Department's Architecture.
" DOJ Office of Justice Programs IT Initiatives (http://www.it.ojp.gov/index.jsp): This website outlines some of the major IT Initiatives of the Department's Office of Justice Programs. There are a number of links to related websites and details on each of these IT Initiatives.
" National Information Exchange Model (www.niem.gov): NIEM is the outgrowth of efforts that took root inside the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to standardize the Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema used to describe the information commonly used by and exchanged among local, state, and federal enforcement agencies. NIEM represents the current approach to cross domain and cross levels of government information sharing (data standards).
" Global Justice XML Data Model (http://www.it.ojp.gov/topic.jsp?topic_id=43): GJXDM is the precursor to NIEM. The Global JXDM is an XML standard designed specifically for criminal justice information exchanges, providing law enforcement, public safety agencies, prosecutors, public defenders, and the judicial branch with a tool to effectively share data and information in a timely manner. What used to be GJXDM is now the Justice Domain within NIEM.
o GJXDM Success Stories https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/global/groups/outreach/success-stories
" The Eurojust Project (http://eurojust.europa.eu/): Eurojust project which adopted the GJXDM as a way to speed development of warrant and other exchanges among EU member countries, resulting in a 50% reduction in cost and time to get operational.
" The Law Enforcement Information Technology Standards Council (http://www.leitsc.org/): The mission of LEITSC is to foster the growth of strategic planning and implementation of integrated justice systems. Together, participants from these organizations represent the law enforcement community as a whole on information technology standards related issues. LEITSC provides functional standards for CAD and RMS.
" Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (http://www.iir.com/GLOBAL/): The Institute for Intergovernmental Research receives grant funding from the Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, to provide coordination and management support to the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global).
o Global Products (https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/global)
" Regional Information Sharing Systems (http://www.iir.com/riss/): RISS is a national program of regionally oriented services designed to enhance the ability of local, state, federal, and tribal criminal justice agencies to Identify, target, and remove criminal conspiracies and activities spanning multi-jurisdictional, multi-state, and sometimes international boundaries. Facilitate rapid exchange and sharing of information among the agencies pertaining to known suspected criminals or criminal activity. Enhance coordination and communication among agencies that are in pursuit of criminal conspiracies determined to be interjurisdictional in nature. Currently both Interpol and Europol are members of RISS.
To support government-wide information sharing, all recipients of grants for projects implementing information exchange capabilities using XML technology are required to use the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) / Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) in accordance with these Implementation Guidelines. Grantees are further required to assemble, register and make available without restriction all IEPDs and related artifacts generated as a result of the grant to the component registry. Assembly of NIEM IEPDs within the NIEM IEPD Tool is optional. However, NIEM IEPDs must be assembled in accordance with IEPD Requirements as specified by the NIEM Program Management Office, and must be registered in the Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) Clearinghouse.
Organizations not receiving federal funding to use NIEM / GJXDM are also encouraged to register their IEPDs in the IEPD Clearinghouse. This will facilitate interoperability of information systems and will enhance effective sharing of critical information.
Specific grant program requirements are stated in the grant solicitation or program guidelines and also may be included in the special conditions of the grant award. This information and more on this topic regarding eligibility and requirements can be obtained from your Grant Manager due to the fact that each grant is different and the grant managers have the documentation regarding these grants and the terms stated on them.
Many vendors offer specific tools for this purpose, and many databases now have the capability to read an XML document and insert the contents into the appropriate tables. Implementers should beware that this approach carries some risk of tightly coupling the business logic of the exchange to a particular database and particular database structure. Implementers should consider the benefits and potential pitfalls of the approach before applying it.
This article will focus on options, standards, and tools that are either offered under an open source license, developed by a standards body or industry consortium, or freely available to the general public.
One approach is to write software that parses the XML stream (the IEP) and processes the resulting structure or tokens to interact with a database or system. This approach is usually programming-intensive and can be error-prone. It typically involves using an XML parser, such as the .NET runtime's parser or the Crimson or Xerces parsers on the Java platform.
A second approach is to use a software library and application programming interface (API) that represents an XML stream as a graph of objects automatically, based on code generated from an XML schema. The .NET framework contains this capability natively; the Java 2 platform offers several approaches to this, including the Java API for XML Binding (JAX-B) and XML Beans.
Click on this link: http://www.it.ojp.gov/framesets/iepd-clearinghouse-noClose.htm and click on the word "My Stuff", and click on "Create a New Account" button to create a user account.
1. 1. Once the user account has been created, follow the steps below to submit the IEPD Metadata Information.
Click on this link: http://www.it.ojp.gov/framesets/iepd-clearinghouse-noClose.htm
2. 2. On the left hand side, click on the word "download" to get the IEPD Form Template, and after that, please read the procedure on the page 2, and completely fill out the information on page 1.
3 3. Then, go back to the web page, on the right hand side, click on the "Submit IEPD Information" link.
4. 4. At the "Title", provide the name of the IEPD, then give a brief description about your IEPD at the "Summary".
5. 5. Click on the "Browse..." button to attach the IEPD Form Template that you just filled out. (REMEMBER: Please attach the page 1 only). After that, click on the "Continue…" button, then the system will send you a message to your email to confirm that it has been submitted.
NOTE: Clearinghouse will upload your article in 24-72 hours.
If you still cannot submit the information, please contact the NISS Help Desk to help you submit your IEPD Metadata Template at:
E-mail: [email protected] (recommended)
Telephone: 1-877-333-5111 or 703-726-1919
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is a Federal, State, Local and Tribal interagency initiative providing a foundation for seamless information exchange. NIEM is a framework to:
- Bring stakeholders and Communities of Interest together to identify information sharing requirements in day-to-day operational and emergency situations;
- Develop standards, a common lexicon and an on-line repository of information exchange package documents to support information sharing;
- Provide technical tools to support development, discovery, dissemination and re-use of exchange documents; and
- Provide training, technical assistance and implementation support services for enterprise-wide information exchange.
NIEM was launched on February 28, 2005, through a partnership agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and signed by Chief Information Officers. It leverages the data exchange standards efforts successfully implemented by the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global) and extends the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) to facilitate timely, secure information sharing across the whole of the justice, public safety, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, and homeland security enterprise.
NIEM Website: https://niem.gov
The NIEM mission is to assist in developing a unified strategy, partnerships, and technical implementations for national information sharing—laying the foundation for local, state, tribal, and federal interoperability by joining together communities of interest. That foundation consists of three parts: core data components, reusable XML exchange packages, and business process models for information sharing.
The goal of the NIEM is to prevent fragmentation and semantic non-interoperability in Extensible Markup Language (XML) standards within and across agencies through a proactive collaborative initiative, to develop and implement common XML information sharing standards that meet critical homeland security data exchange needs.
The NIEM has the following objectives:
- Develop a unified strategy within the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ) for an XML-based information sharing capability.
- Develop an initial implementation of the NIEM that satisfies Executive Order (EO) 13356 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-11.
- Develop an exchange layer for the XML profile implementation of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Data Reference Model (FEA DRM).
- Develop an XML profile of NIEM that implements the FEA DRM.
- Provide technical assistance and training to local, state, tribal, and federal organizations seeking to implement revisions to the GJXDM and support the new national standards emerging from joint efforts under this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
- Develop and demonstrate an application of the NIEM for the Bureau of Border and Transportation Security (BTS) operational domain involving customs and border patrol agent data exchange as the first pilot.
- Build out a framework for many pilot use cases under the umbrella of the NIEM.
External components are encapsulated in NIEM-conformant components. This introduces the concept of “external adapter” types. An external adapter type is a NIEM conformant XML Schema complex type that wraps a set of external content.
These adapter types and container elements are XML Schema components, and so are defined within the namespace of the schema currently being defined.
This article specifies two constructs, which contain external content. The first is the external adapter type. This type is a NIEM-conformant type that contains attributes and elements from external namespaces. The second is the external container element. The container element is used when an external namespace provides top-level types for use, but does not provide appropriate top-level elements. In such a case, create a container element of the externally-provided type. Container elements are defined in NIEM conformant namespaces, are named differently than regular NIEM-conformant elements, and are used in a more restricted way.
Consistent with the fundamentals of NIEM, XML elements are used for semantics, and XML Schema types are used to contain necessary structures. Specific rules for definition of adapter components will take this approach, focusing on encapsulating external structures as NIEM-conformant types, within strongly-defined elements with specific semantics.
If an external type needs to be extended for use, such extension should be done outside a NIEM-conformant namespace. These structures are intended to encapsulate external content. They are not indented to introduce extensions and modifications to external content into NIEM-conformant namespaces. If an application schema needs to be constructed to conform to an external standard, the schema should be created in a user defined namespace, outside the NIEM-conformant namespaces. Then, those external components should be referenced by NIEM-conformant external adapter types and external container elements.
The NIEM is a collaborative development initiative with the initial development principally supported by DHS and DOJ. The NIEM development strategy will leverage DOJ’s GJXDM as the principal baseline data model. The pilot project will develop the NIEM as a re-branded version of the GJXDM, extending its scope and aligning its structure and associated processes to include the concept of core data types.
NIEM is an ambitious undertaking that faces numerous technical and logistical challenges and associated risks. The development strategy will mitigate these risks by leveraging the proven technologies and processes of the GJXDM; revising and extending the GJXDM architecture, components, and processes for the NIEM based on an extensive GJXDM knowledge base of successful applications and lessons learned; applying industry best practices; and scoping the initial NIEM release to a small high priority set of core components.
NIEM's strategy will provide core value propositions in several respects:
- Facilitate growth of data model through harmonization of new data components
- Coordinate independent project teams within DOJ and DHS
- Separate core entities and attributes from domain specific components
- Produce multiple modular schemas (universal core, community-of-interest core, and domain specific)
- Facilitate discovery of reusable data components
- Facilitate assembly of reusable exchange packages
- Adopt a standard for assigning context
- Maintain compatibility with GJXDM for future work
- Demonstrate use of core in federated query, and
- Coordinate joint development and joint governance of core entities and exchanges
The NIEM's development strategy revises and extends the GJXDM architecture, components, and processes for the NIEM based on an extensive GJXDM knowledge base of successful applications, lessons learned, and apply industry best practices. NIEM's strategy will provide core value propositions in several respects:
- Facilitate growth of data model through harmonization of new data components
- Coordinate independent project teams within DOJ and DHS
- Separate core entities and attributes from domain specific
- Produce multiple modular schemas (universal core, community-of-interest core, and domain specific)
- Facilitate discovery of reusable data components
- Facilitate assembly of reusable exchange packages
- Adopt a standard for assigning context
- Maintain compatibility with GJXDM for future work
- Demonstrate use of core in federated query
- Coordinate joint development and joint governance of core entities and exchanges
Source: https://www.niem.gov
Rather than nationwide integration of all local, state, tribal, and federal databases, NIEM focuses on cross‑domain information exchanges between communities of interest (COIs), across all levels of government—whether that is between individual local law enforcement agencies, law enforcement and emergency service agencies and other domains, or between local, state, tribal, regional, and federal agencies. As a consequence, not all data needs to be
NIEM‑compliant, only that data that is being shared across domains.
.NIEM is a framework to:
- Bring stakeholders and Communities of Interest together to identify information sharing requirements in day-to-day operational and emergency situations;
- Develop standards, a common lexicon and an on-line repository of information exchange package documents to support information sharing;
- Provide technical tools to support development, discovery, dissemination and re-use of exchange documents; and
- Provide training, technical assistance and implementation support services for enterprise-wide information exchange.
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is identified by the ISE as a standards body, which provides a set of reusable common information standards. To effectively exchange information across domains, there must be a common semantic understanding of data among participating agencies, and the data must be formatted in a semantically consistent manner. For example, two agencies may each gather information about persons charged with committing a crime. If the agencies share information regarding these persons, there must be a common understanding of the terminology each agency uses. One agency, for example, may refer to the person as the "offender," while another refers to them as the "defendant." Agencies do not necessarily need to entirely retool their information systems or adopt standards and coding schemes that impose an artificial uniformity in data collection that fails to meet their operational business needs, but there must be common understanding and semantic consistency in the structure of the data that crosses agency lines if it is to be successfully shared.