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Universal Core Advances Information Sharing Across Government Agencies November 2009
A Venezuelan cargo ship, claiming to carry bananas destined for American supermarkets, approaches the port at Charleston, S.C. At the same time, U.S. Coast Guard intelligence analysts receive information suggesting the ship actually hauls not fruit, but illegal narcotics. To respond effectively, Coast Guard intelligence officials must interact with many other agencies—quickly sharing vital information among different organizations. The event described above is fictional, but similar incidents occur daily in the real world. As the world grows more complex, inter-agency collaboration has become crucial—but that doesn't make it any easier. Although the government is working diligently to address this problem, interaction between and among agencies is still often hamstrung by technical and organizational challenges. UCore, a new data sharing standard and messaging framework developed by the federal government, may be the breakthrough that intelligence officials in several government agencies need to overcome barriers to effective information sharing. When the barriers come down, they can respond faster to potential threats.
The challenges are numerous, involving issues both large and small. Different agencies deploy different communications systems and software. Terminology evolves so that common terms develop different meanings within different communities of interest. For example, within the human intelligence community, the term "target" refers to a person who can provide valuable information, while in the Air Force, a "target" is something to be destroyed. Taken together, all these divergent technologies and cultural norms can prevent intelligence analysts working in different agencies from collaborating quickly and seamlessly. For instance, when acted out, the opening scenario demonstrates how many facets are involved in inter-agency cooperation—and how the new solution can help. (See "Bananas or Narcotics?" below.) Basic Data Standards Lead to Big Changes The Universal Core (UCore) XML-based data exchange standard and messaging framework supports the information sharing needs of intelligence officials across several large agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. During UCore's development, MITRE served as chief engineer and provided subject matter expertise in data sharing, IT, systems engineering, and standards development. UCore improves information exchange by providing standard XML-based definitions for several critical, universally understood concepts—who, what, when and where—and implementing them across a broad government stakeholder base, regardless of the makeup of their IT systems. It also provides a mechanism to mark information with security classification markings through a standard used within the intelligence community, known as the Information Security Markings, or ISM, standard. The data exchange standard's common vocabulary is the heart of UCore's success, according to MITRE's Frank Petroski, a network and distributed systems engineer who has worked on the program since its inception. "Big data exchange standards are hard to achieve, because you need to get agreement among many stakeholders on many elements," Petroski explains. The benefit of UCore is in its simplicity, he says. "We focused on a small number of elements, which proved to be much more effective." A Milestone of Cross-Boundary Information Sharing Barriers to practical information sharing among federal agencies and their partners include incompatible networks, access rules, data formats, vocabularies, and security domains. UCore addresses the latter three issues directly by providing standardized vocabularies and security features, Petroski says. It uses open standards and protocols such as the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Geography Markup Language (GML), IC ISM, and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to provide a standardized framework for information exchange. Since UCore is government-owned, it requires no licenses and works in standard browser- and Web-services-based environments. Users need no special training beyond proficiency in XML, which has become a commonly used standard for encoding information. UCore was originally developed in response to lessons learned from events such as the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. It was officially released in March 2009. As of October 2009, the public UCore website (https://ucore.gov) has close to 2,000 registered users across the federal government, academia, and industry, offering training and tools for the UCore community. To coincide with the March release, MITRE launched an initiative to provide development tools to the user community via https://ucore.gov to accelerate adoption of the UCore standard. UCore has already garnered a number of endorsements from within the federal user community. The Chief Architect of the Office of Management and Budget described UCore as "a big milestone on the road to cross-boundary information sharing." It has also been officially endorsed by officials from USSTRATCOM, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. Additionally, the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement honored UCore with its award for outstanding contribution to the development of network-centric operations "for supporting the White House's National Strategy for Information Sharing." Government Computer News magazine also hailed UCore as "a giant leap forward" in government information sharing. To MITRE's Petroski, the most valuable endorsement is positive feedback from users within the federal community. "Now we want to build on this momentum to expand the UCore toolset and position UCore for wider adoption, as quickly as possible," Petroski says. "There's a lot of potential here." —by Maria S. Lee Related Information Articles and News
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