States should adopt the National Information Exchange Model data sharing construct, urged the National Association of State Chief Information Officers in an April 28 statement.

NIEM is a set of standardized core XML schemas that allows communities of interest to add on mutually-intelligible data component specific to their communities. It originated as a Justice-led project but now is managed by the Homeland Security Department.

Because NIEM allows community-specific extensions to the core, it's been already gradually adopted by many federal and state organizations, including health, international trade and maritime-related entities. Twelve federal agencies have already adopted or are in the process of adopting NIEM, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

"We're encouraging state government CIOs to bring the NIEM products and capabilities into their enterprise architecture and data management strategy for use across all government lines of business," said Kyle Schafer, NASCIO president and chief technology officer for West Virginia.

For more:
- see the NASCIO April 28 statement
- download a NASCIO NEIM "call to action" (.pdf)

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