I want to introduce National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) , a federal initiative for the data exchange across federal agencies.
Data and information are one of this Nation’s most valuable assets, yet the majority of it is locked away in disconnected systems across a multitude of data centers. Many years of decentralized IT oversight, redundant IT software development and hardware purchasing, a disjointed approach to infrastructure, and failed IT projects created an information technology patchwork that increases the cost of government and puts mission-critical systems at risk.
The Federal Government has seen little productivity improvements on the over $600 billion spend on information technology over the past decade.1
Delivering services effectively and efficiently is expected from our public in this new society that demands immediate data delivery to our finger tips anyway and anywhere it’s needed. The American public wants from its government the type of service delivery they get at home and on their smart device. They want the simplicity of searching with one word and finding what they need across the vast resources of the web. Simply, the federal government's approach to IT infrastructure is not sufficient to meet current public expectations.
Government Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have been trying to adopt best practices for years yet progress within Government is far behind that of its private sector counterparts. The challenge to improve the deployment of information technology is squarely on the table for these CIOs to solve. These CIOs are struggling with tight budgets and resource constraints in an ever-changing IT landscape.
As technology has become an increasingly important service delivery tool, Government IT organizations have seen their missions expanded beyond consolidating server rooms and optimizing back-end software. It is not enough to address building the right technology infrastructure or to address consolidating data centers or to leverage cloud computing capabilities. Today's challenge includes recognizing that data within an agency is more valuable than the hardware or software used to collect, store and manage it. Improving information technology includes deploying shared services to increase mission performance, optimize information sharing and exchange, and ensuring data security and protection when leveraging cloud computing services. Gains for addressing today's challenges within government information technology should be focused on organizing the vast data in its inventory.
Since its inception in 2005, the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) has been focused on data: understanding it, ensuring it is discoverable and standardizing it as it moves in between the current siloed stores across the Government. NIEM is not a software program, a computer system or a data repository but rather presents an approach to driving standardized connections among and between governmental entities as well as with private sector and international partners which enable disparate systems to share, exchange, accept, and translate information. With the use of the NIEM framework comes greater agility and efficiency in satisfying business needs and implementing repeatable processes. The common data connections developed using NIEM result in reusable artifacts that reduce future development costs resulting in cost avoidance.
Thanks,
Sudhir
