Collaboration
To increase the ability to share information across agencies, the Department of Defense (DoD) adopted a network-centric approach to data management that allows authorized users to discover, access, and understand shared data, products, and services. One of the most significant of these interagency data sharing efforts is the DoD Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES), which currently enables information sharing between the DoD and intelligence, homeland security, and civilian agencies.
FGM uses evolutionary information engineering practices and service oriented architecture (SOA) to support information sharing within an organization, across an enterprise, among agencies, and even between countries. In some situations, data can be shared openly. In others, considerations for security and national interests must be accommodated. No matter the environment, for an information sharing system to be effective it must embody the following characteristics:
Visible: You must be able to find data on the network.
In today’s environment of expansive global, networked enterprises, and communities of interest, finding the data you need when it is buried among thousands of data sources can be a costly and time-consuming process. Keyword searches alone are not good enough.
FGM’s state-of-the-art proprietary product, Diogenes, bridges the gap between data consumers and users within the DoD community by enabling users to discover any information resource via the Internet. Diogenes’ metadata-driven data discovery and information delivery capabilities make it easy for information producers to publish information and for decision makers to control the discovery process. Decision makers easily perform detailed, highly refined searches to quickly find the elusive, actionable information they need.
Accessible: You must be able to get to the data.
Data sharing is useless without a vehicle that enables appropriate access to the data. To accomplish this, FGM developed the Metadata Registry (MDR) and Service Discovery capabilities for the NCES. These capabilities provide visibility and access to shared metadata components and services in development and use across the DoD. Using the MDR, users can discover, share, and re-use data with greater agility to develop mission critical applications faster and more efficiently than ever.
The Department of State asked FGM to develop a system to streamline and automate the trade control process to track dual-use and dangerous materials. The system we developed, Tracker, links essential trade control agencies and allows multi-national sharing among organizations on the Tracker network. It acts as a central location for inputting, processing, tracking, reviewing, and deciding license applications, as well as manages a log of all decisions and actions taken.
This has resulted in an unprecedented ability to keep track of tens of thousands of potentially dangerous items around the world in near-time. It also provides a critical decision-making capability by providing a bigger picture of trends and exposing relationships among the parties of each transaction. Tracker has been successfully deployed and operates in over 12 countries and in 16 languages throughout Europe and Asia.
Understandable: You must know how to use the data.
One of the most challenging aspects of data sharing is addressing interoperability issues between different systems. Metadata is used to describe data so others know how to use it. At FGM we apply our considerable expertise in data mediation to produce a coherent set of information by resolving the syntactic and semantic differences among different data sets from various data sources.
We developed the Discoverable, Dynamic Data Layer (D3L) which allows disparate data sources to be federated and then accessed as NCES-compatible data services. This tool increases the utility of existing data sources so that data originally intended for one application can be repurposed and accessed in a standard, uniform way by other applications thus allowing the data to be used for additional or emerging missions.
FGM also developed a collaborative, decision support application, known as the Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA). This application supports humanitarian demining efforts in more than 40 countries. Using new and innovative open source technologies, we created a versatile application that includes a completely customizable data model allowing users to collect the information they need locally while preserving their ability to share information with other IMSMA users.
Trusted: You must be able to share with confidence.
With the increase in data sharing, as well as the use of open source, net-centric architectures, the difficulties in securing information have increased significantly. If your data is vulnerable, your entire organization is vulnerable. Users must be confident they can share what should be shared and protect what should be private.
To accomplish this, FGM incorporates security processes into our systems that protect assets without impeding work. We designed the Federated Development and Certification Environment (FDCE) to use the DoD Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for user authentication, requiring all users and applications to have a certificate to access provided services. We are responsible for all security and accreditation activities of the MDR portal and regularly monitor databases for potential threats to ensure the security posture is not compromised.
For intelligence and special access communities, FGM has developed and maintained information protection and assurance capabilities at the operating and application level, developed secure planning and collaboration tools, and provided secure federated identity/access management.
Governable: You need structure for managing data elements and access.
A risk of incorporating multiple data types and sources into one system is maintaining the integrity of the data assets and the system itself. Rules and processes for structuring input and controlling data artifacts are crucial. FGM has extensive experience in the governance of net-centric systems.
To illustrate, the NCES program initially contained a number of registries that were not coordinated or synchronized in either design or operation, resulting in an error-prone process. To remedy this situation, FGM proposed a Net-Centric Publisher capability to provide a single façade through which a user could seamlessly interact with the NCES Metadata Registry and services. We delivered a simplified interface that allows users to push their information into the appropriate registries and to manage the information published about their entity.
