diplomacy

On October 15-17, Justin Stekervetz, acting managing director of the NIEM Program Management Office (PMO), and Andrew Owen, co-chair of the NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC), traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, to conduct NIEM technical training. The goal of the training was to provide a robust overview of NIEM while focusing on the technical details of the model for those supporting the development of the Universal Message Format (UMF2).

Responsible information sharing continues to be a top priority in our government, and recently it is has received considerable trans-national attention, as well. At the end of August, the CIOs of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, met at the North America Day 2012 Summit in Williamsburg, VA, with other senior IT officials from each country. Since 2001, North America Day has brought together government leaders from these three countries to discuss, in a trusted environment, important technology issues of common concern among the three countries.

Several weeks ago, we traveled to the Netherlands to strengthen international information sharing relationships between American law enforcement agencies and leaders at Europol. Europol is the European law enforcement agency that assists the 27 member countries of the European Union in their fight against serious international crime and terrorism.

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.

Maritime Domain Awareness
Maritime Domain Awareness is an inter-agency and international effort to detect and prevent threats at sea or in any navigable waterway. Our success is dependent upon regional and global partnerships and information sharing among the U.S. maritime community of interest as well as our international partners.

Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Hearing: Ten Years after 9/11; Improving Emergency Communications – We’re interested in this hearing – state law enforcement will be testifying alongside DHS. They’ve all already posted the testimony and you can watch live.

MOU also Supports Launch of NIEM Pilot Projects

Last week, Kshemendra Paul, Information Sharing Environment Program Manager, and I traveled to Mexico City with other senior federal IT officials to discuss how information sharing among the U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments could be enhanced.

This morning, I moderated a panel at the Excellence in Government conference about Information Sharing and Protection.  Panelists included:

The NIEM 2011 National Training Event (NTE) will be held August 23 - 25, 2011, at the Philadelphia Marriot Downtown in Philadelphia, PA.  We had a great turnout at our inaugural NTE held in Baltimore, Maryland, back in 2009.  NIEM now covers 12 domains; we’re strong and growing.  With the Cyber and Biometrics domains becoming official on February 14, and a few other potential domains forming, we look forward to seeing both new and familiar faces.