The IJIS Institute , a nonprofit organization that focuses on mission-critical information sharing for justice, public safety, and homeland security, announces the release of a new document, NIEM Conformance for RFPs. The document is now available at http://www.ijis.org/
NIEM Conformance for RFPs was developed by the IJIS Institute’s Public Safety Technical Standards Committee with grant funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).
The document is intended to be a resource for justice and public safety practitioners who are making decisions with regard to procurement for computer systems that have, or may in the future have, information sharing requirements with other systems. The goal is to help ensure RFPs (Requests for Proposals) meet federal grant requirements and national best practices for information sharing, and to provide help in understanding the technology standards and how they relate to product selection. The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is a national consensus standard that provides an approach and common vocabulary for information exchange. Additionally, conformance with NIEM is often included in U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant requirements, making it all the more critical to understand how NIEM is or will be used within a given program.
The goal of NIEM Conformance for RFPs is to serve as a resource to help practitioners associated with management or oversight of grants referencing NIEM, RFP development and evaluation, or selection of a justice/public safety software system that contains a requirement for information sharing with other systems.
Paul Wormeli, executive director of the IJIS Institute, stated, “Agencies for some time have been asking what it means to be NIEM conformant. Whether to satisfy the grant conditions, or just to be able to say that their exchanges are NIEM conformant, there has to be a definition that people can understand and use in RFP’s to better describe what conformance means. NIEM Conformance for RFPs will be very helpful to state and local justice, law enforcement, and public safety agencies in allowing them to better specify what conformance means, which will ultimately result in the development of systems and information exchanges that better serve communities nationwide.”
To download the document visit http://www.ijis.org/
