The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) of 2004, as amended, calls for the development of an ISE to provide and facilitate the "means for sharing terrorism information among all appropriate Federal, State, local, and tribal entities, and the private sector through the use of policy guidance and technologies."
On December 16, 2005, the President issued a Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Guidelines and Requirements in Support of the Information Sharing Environment that included requirements to develop a common framework for the sharing of information.
In compliance with the President's Memorandum, the PM-ISE has refined the Architecture framework of the ISE through three documents:
- ISE Drivers and Requirements Specification;
- ISE Enterprise Architecture Framework (ISE EAF); and,
- ISE Profile and Architecture Implementation Strategy (ISE PAIS).
Compliance with the guidance and requirements outlined in these documents significantly increases participants' ability to connect to and participate in the ISE.
Document links:
ISE Enterprise Architecture Framework
Enterprise architectures assist organizations in determining whether resources are aligned to their internal mission and strategic goals and objectives, and are useful tools for influencing decisions affecting information technology investment portfolios. The PM-ISE developed the ISE EAF "with the objective of establishing a decentralized, comprehensive, and coordinated environment." The ISE EAF provides a common architectural structure for agencies to use to incorporate their information sharing capabilities into the ISE. It provides a logical structure of ISE business processes, information flows and relationships, services, and high-level data packet descriptions and exchange relationships. ISE participants, including the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ), are adopting the ISE architectural framework to enable their ISE participation.
The ISE EAF has three objectives:
- Provides a comprehensive, strategic description of the overall ISE Architecture;
- Establishes an architectural framework for implementing ISE capabilities; and
- Identifies key architectural decisions which have been made or must be made.
The "Virtual Environment to Share Information" figure illustrates the general ISE architectural concept.
ISE Profile Architecture and Implementation Strategy
The ISE PAIS was developed through a collaborative process involving agencies of the Information Sharing Council and was reviewed and approved by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee, as well as the Office of Management and Budget. The PAIS was developed to help drive ISE participants' enterprise, segment and solution architectures, and systems. In conjunction with the Federal Transition Framework (FTF), ISE participants are provided the ISE PAIS to guide the development of processes, approaches, and artifacts for implementing and building operational, compliant ISE segment architectures, including an ISE Shared Space. It provides critical guidance to support the integration of existing planned information sharing capabilities into the ISE.
The ISE PAIS is a companion document to the ISE EAF and identifies implementation guidance that will be compiled from the ISE Drivers and Requirements Specification. The ISE PAIS recognizes the ISE EAF as an approved and accepted framework for structuring and describing information sharing services, systems, and processes required to participate in the ISE. The PAIS presents a six-stage ISE Architecture Implementation Life Cycle following the guidance found in the ISE EAF to develop and implement an Information Sharing Segment Architecture (ISSA) and an ISE Shared Space.
The term "life cycle" refers to a continuous iterative process that ISE participants and Implementation Agents should follow in implementing their capability to interface with the ISE. Over time, as the ISE evolves and matures, these iterations will occur with less frequency.
Institutionalizing Sharing
Agencies are working hard to make information sharing part of internal policy and business process structure. Examples of Architecture-driven successes in information sharing are documented below, including some unexpected spin-offs beyond the bounds of the ISE.
- The DHS Regional Sharing Service (RSS) initiative deployed information sharing technologies and operating policies in compliance with the ISE EAF supporting information sharing between the ICE Pattern Analysis and Collection System (ICEPIC) and local law enforcement agencies in Seattle WA, Laredo TX, and Los Angeles CA.
- The DOJ is building information sharing segment architectures leveraging concepts from the ISE EAF, with a focus on State and local law enforcement sharing through capabilities such as the N-DEx, supported by LEO and RISS, and the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS), a state owned system connecting all 50 states and territories along with every federal agency with a Justice component.
- Individual states, such as Florida, New York, Texas, and California, are using ISE guiding documents for new initiatives with Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) implementation.
- The national health care community is considering leveraging ISE EAF concepts to help meet its national health information sharing needs.
- The DHS is leveraging National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and ISE EAF guidance to construct 50 reusable information exchanges across the full range of its mission areas; including leveraging NIEM to develop the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), a simple, general format for exchanging all-hazard emergency alerts and public warnings over all kinds of networks.