The Texas Path to National Information Exchange Model
Julie Wade, ACED
We live in a post-9/11 world of
terrorist attacks, natural disasters
and inner city crime that is disproportionate
to any other time in recent history.
Our law enforcement and judicial branches
must be able to communicate with each
other during emergency situations and
share critical information needed in intelligence
gathering operations. Other information
sharing is also needed between
hospitals, fire departments, local and state
governments with federal agencies such as
Homeland Security, the FBI, NOAA
(National Oceanic and Atmosperic Association), the Department of Transportation,
and/or the Center for Disease
Control. The Texas justice community is served
by a wide variety of IT systems that were
designed to suit their own specific purposes.
Today, the courts have sophisticated
case management systems that meet their
internal operational needs, but they are
just beginning to routinely share information
between each other and with other
agencies throughout the state and justice
system. Police departments now have
high-tech dispatch systems, mobile field
reporting technologies, sophisticated
records management and crime analysis
systems, but few until recently were able to
integrate their systems with other law
enforcement agencies to provide real-time
information sharing of critical data at key
decision points. Because of the disparity in the way
computer systems operate, it has been difficult
for law enforcement and justice
agencies that need to share critical information.
As a result, vast amounts of data
has been manually coded and transmitted
resulting in duplicate data being captured
and deployed. This results in loss of time
and valuable resources being wasted in
having to research data that is obsolete or
contains errors. As you can imagine, law
enforcement officers and judges often have
been unable to receive timely, accurate, or
complete information. Thanks to extensible markup language
(XML), the basic blueprint for data sharing
on a statewide and national basis is
now being developed that will curtail these
problems and greatly enhance the accessibility
and reliability of the information
received and shared. Background of the Texas Justice Integration
Information Initiative, (the “TJI3
Plan”) Shortly after 9/11, Texas began its plan
to open the state’s computer infrastructure
using the emerging technologies of XML
to exchange information between computer
systems in different jurisdictions, locations
and levels of government so that all
the various local, municipal and state
agencies could communicate and share
information within the state’s justice community.
This plan was called the Texas Justice
Integration Information Initiative, or what
is now referred to as the TJI3 Plan. Step
one of this plan was accomplished in 2002,
and a charter was created to govern the
statewide justice information sharing utilizing
the XML standard data reference
model to share information between the
Texas 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. The Global Justice XML Data Model
(GJXDM or Global JXDM) At the same time Texas was undertaking
this effort to open its telecommunications
portals, in August 2002, a governmental
task force from the Department of
Justice and the Office of Justice Programs,
working with researchers from the Georgia
Tech Research Institute, were also tasked with exploring the XML schema and
applying XML best practices to design and
implement the Global Justice XML Data
Model (GJXDM or Global JXDM). The
Global JXDM removes the burden from
agencies to independently create exchange
standards, and because of its extensibility,
this model provided more flexibility to
deal with unique agency requirements and
changes. Through the use of a common
vocabulary that is understood system-tosystem,
the Global JXDM enables access
from multiple sources and reuse in multiple applications. The first release of the
Global JXDM was introduced in 2003.
Texas began to adopt GJXDM into its TJI3
Plan. Introduction to the National Information
Exchange Model (NIEM) The federal government, through an
agreement between The Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and the
Department of Justice (DOJ), improved
the GJXDM schema and created the
National Information Exchange Model
(NIEM), opening further the framework
for the sharing of information between
local and state governmental and justice
agencies with federal agencies and the federal
government, specifically the DHS and
the FBI. NIEM provides the platform for agreement
on what different words mean and
the structure and relationship of data.
Reports of suspicious activity will have elements
that are well-defined and related in
a data model law enforcement can use
without manually having to re-enter data.
Today, a growing number of projects use
NIEM standards, including:
- The FBI’s new National Data Exchange
program. This is a national repository
of criminal incident information.
- The Sentinel project, an automated case
management system for federal law
enforcement agencies.
- Justice’s Regional Data Exchange.
Therefore, rather than integrating just the
local, state and federal databases, NIEM is
a cross-domain information exchange
between key domains and “Communities
of Interest,” across all levels of government.
NIEM does not attempt to normalize
all information components across all
agencies and organizations, but only those
that have cross organizational boundaries
and only within that sub-set of data needed
for inter- and intra-agency information
exchange. In an emergency situation, local
first responders (fire, EMS, police, health
officials) can safely share critical information
in a secure setting with other city,
county, state or federal agencies that need
to share this information. NIEM facilitates the information
exchange involved in these situations.
NIEM also standardizes the data components
and terminology used throughout
all agencies sharing data by making these
connections more expansive and expedient.
We now have an ALL HAZARDS imaginable
networked environment being
developed to link justice, emergency management
and response, and intelligence
gathering. NIEM ties everything together
throughout the country. The first version
became available to the public in 2006.
NIEM 2.0 rolled out July 31, 2007. Texas Justice Information Exchange Model
(TJIEM) Texas has again shifted its TJI3 Plan
and has now joined as a Community of
Interest in the national NIEM 2.0 model
by identifying 28 IEPDs (local/state interchanges
for development in the information
sharing network) who began implementation
of the standard on October 31,
2007. This update to the TJI3 Plan is now
called the “Texas Path to NIEM.” The Texas Path to NIEM integrates the
Texas Justice Information Exchange
Model, (TJIEM) into five goals:
- Formalize the governance structure for
interagency cooperation in the development
and maintenance of the Texas
Justice Information Exchange Model;
- Create a Texas Justice Information
Exchange Model (TJIEM) that conforms
to NIEM;
- Establish standards to improve integrity,
accuracy, and timeliness of justice,
public safety, and homeland security
information;
- Create an Operations Plan to increase
access to and to improve the response
from justice and public safety data systems
and to enable sharing across other
domains in support of homeland security
efforts; and
- Explore funding opportunities to support
the efforts of local entities in pursuing
the Texas Path to NIEM initiatives.
Don Farris of the Texas Department of
Corrections, project manager for the Texas
Path to NIEM initiative, explained how Texas will use NIEM as an avenue to share
information, “Say the Department of Family
Protective Services wanted to share
information about a licensed foster care
provider notice to DPS. The court can
send out the information on NIEM, and
both the DFPS and DPS receive the information
at the same time. Vice versa, if
DFPS sends information, DPS and the
OCA receive it. Rather than the usual
route, where DPS says — hey Harris
County, we need this information. By this
method the information is sent once electronically.” Among some of the 28 IEPDs identified
for the TJIEM to share their information
exchanges using the NIEM standards
include those appearing in Table 1.
Some of the other IEPDs being considered
for future implementation of the
TJIEM include:
- Mental health information (psychological/
psychiatric evaluation) needed
between the Department of Mental
Health and the Sheriff and TDCJ;
- Juvenile information needed between
Juvenile Justice Agencies and the Sheriff, Jail, Probation, Court, Law Enforcement
and TDCJ;
- Pawn Shop information needed
between Pawn Shops and Law Enforcement
and DPS (pawn shops submit
listings of new items received);
- Crime Lab Report information needed
between the State of Texas Crime Lab
and Law Enforcement; and
- Texas Gang Database Update information
between Law Enforcement and DPS—Gang Task Force.
Farris reports that the system is scalable.
“You get to build it. But we want to
follow that core national standard. You
get your system set to receive the information
on NIEM 2.0. This first contract is a
local to state contract. The future system
will be able to take that from the State of
Texas and share it with the other states
and federal government.”
Farris credits a core group of 9 or 10
people who got together and formed the
Texas Integrated Justice Information Systems
Committee, called TIJIS for the project’s
success. This committee is comprised
of state, municipality and county
leaders, who have taken the information
sharing to another level, which has
brought us to the Texas Path to NIEM.
“In early November 2006, TIJIS realized
the need to take steps to move
towards NIEM,” Farris said. Farris and
other members of TIJIS went to Austin in
an effort to raise awareness of the problem
and gain support on a state level. They
were encouraged from the response. TIJIS
sent out an RFP in early Spring 2007.
When it came back, the contract was
awarded it to UNISYS, the successful vendor.
And so, the Texas Path to NIEM has
been started. “From November 2006
through August 31, 2007, everything snowballed
pretty quickly,” said Farris. “There
was a lot of hard work put in by DPS,
OCA and DCJ, Harris County, Tarrant
County, and especially the leadership of
the TIJIS Board.”
Don Farris is now busy spending his
time marketing NIEM to counties and
municipalities throughout Texas. “We
have to tell them we’ve got these standards,
they are NIEM standards, they can help you, and they can help us to exchange
information quickly and more accurately.
And they can help in any emergency
response situations. That’s all what we’re
about, sharing this information and getting
to the necessary people as quickly as
we can to help them make decisions on
the situation or keep the flow of information
accurate and in non-emergency situations
keep it moving.”
The Intelligent Transportation System and
Public Safety Information Exchange Local governments are also taking
advantage of the information sharing
exchange provided by NIEM. The IJIS
Institute’s Intelligent Transportation System
and Public Safety Information
Exchange project is currently working with
the City of Houston, TranStar and Metro Police, to implement a Field Operation
Test (FOT) for the project’s Incident Notification
exchange using NIEM 2.0. The
Department of Transportation and
Department of Justice co-sponsor the
project with management support provided
by the IJIS Institute. Conclusion Texas is in a much better position
today than ever before to share critical
information, thanks to Don Farris and the
other leaders in our State who are working
hard to bring us into a safer world to live. Julie Wade, ACED, is a legal assistant with
Harrison, Bettis, Staff, McFarland &
Weems, LLP.
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