Using information-sharing exchange techniques from the private sector to enhance information sharing between domestic intelligence organizations

Abstract

Security and intelligence organizations have challenges in information sharing have resulted in incomplete information. Since 2001 state and local governments in the United States have formed information sharing hubs called fusion centers which request information from peer fusion centers as well as sharing situation reports about emerging and ongoing security situations. The requests for information (RFI) and situation awareness reporting processes are manual and occur without data standards or process standards. Public sector and private sector information sharing systems utilized both process and data standards to automate routine information sharing between organizations like those exchanges between fusion centers. These standards are coupled with information sharing tools that better enable consumer services, such as searching and booking airline travel through on-line systems, exchanges of criminal justice information using the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and sharing of patient and medical information utilizing the Health Information Exchange (HIE). This thesis combines the process and tools from both the public and private sectors data and process standards and the use of information sharing tools to propose a conceptual national intelligence-sharing model (NISM). SMEs from the intelligence, counterterrorism and technology communities, within the fusion center environment, were used to review, modify, and validate NISM.