PM-ISE is excited to participate in the Association for Enterprise Information (AFEI)’s January 25^th event, Shared Services across Government, which is now free for US government employees. This event will continue the important government and industry dialogue around information sharing services and standards from December’s Standards Palooza, or WIS3.

A few weeks ago, I joined Canadian government representatives in promoting NIEM adoption (www.niem.gov | www.niem.ca) to their law enforcement and public safety communities. NIEM is a model for information sharing technical standards, and it has had strong adoption here in the U.S. among our law enforcement, public safety, justice, and homeland security communities.

A few weeks ago, I had the honor to meet representatives from the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community (IC) to discuss the need for a common framework for information exchanges among agencies. Differing parts of our government use different information exchange frameworks, which include different standards for sharing information. This is a problem, as the news events of the past few weeks clearly illustrate.

Friends of the ISE: Our office is excited to announce that we are hosting the Workshop for Information Sharing & Safeguarding Standards, or WIS3, in DC on 5 December 2011. This workshop will bring together industry, government, and nonprofit participants to debate, discuss, and ultimately agree to standards and frameworks that will enable responsible information sharing and safeguarding across departments and agencies.

A number of foundational technologies are essential to building a robust information sharing environment (ISE). One of these key technology areas is whole-of-government identity and access management because the threats to our nation transcend a single agency or department’s scope. Consistent whole-of-government identity and access management helps enable interoperability and security across the enterprise architectures built and maintained by agencies and departments.

On August 8^th, ISE partners came together to discuss how to reuse different departments and agencies’ existing standards and best practices and use them throughout the government  to enable assured interoperability across different departments, domains, and levels of government.

Earlier this week I had the honor of speaking alongside Ms. Cheryl J. Roby, Chief of Staff, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration/Department of Defense Chief Information Office - and Mr. Frank Sinkular, Acting Director, Unified Cross Domain Management Office (UCDMO). We were in Chicago highlighting the progress and planned future efforts towards "cross-domain information sharing" as part of the UCDMO's Annual Conference.

Last summer, the PM-ISE facilitated an extensive Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) user requirements survey. The results indicated that the top user need was reducing the number of separate log-ons required to access SBU resources.

In our networked world, we reap the benefits of data aggregation on a daily basis. For example, I work in DC and when my team and I are looking for a good lunch, we use all kinds of data to find it. Today, we are turning to Yelp, Twitter, and a few others for help. We allow our smart phone apps to access our location and preferences to provide restaurant recommendations, and we can see where other colleagues are eating.

We here at the Office of the PM-ISE are excited to join both the Object Management Group (OMG) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). As government organizations continue to acquire solutions that are compliant with the kinds of standards that these organizations support and develop, we will enhance our nation’s information sharing capabilities.