The National Information Exchange Model
The Government has released the National Information Exchange Model Beta 1.0. Initially this will help government agencies to exchange information covered by this model more effectively. The long term benefits of this model will be the ability to perform concept aware searches across vast repositories of information and enable greater data visibility. This can be made possible with the introduction of semantic technologies to help define the interrelationships of the information.
I was going to write up a sample use case but found one in the Introduction documentation instead. It reads,
"U.S. Border Patrol agents view a map of the area, displaying fixed locations such as landmarks and roads, agent locations, and the status of seismic sensors, on a vehicle‑mounted or, when away from their vehicle, handheld device. When sensor activation is displayed on the map, the nearest agent indicates that he will respond to it. The responding agent approaches the location and encounters a group of suspected undocumented migrants. He identifies himself as a U.S. Border Patrol agent and apprehends the majority of the group, but two men in the group escape. The agent radios a description of the two men and their direction, and the approximate last known position of the “got aways” is entered on the map so that other agents in the field can view it. A search is coordinated for the two migrants. Meanwhile, information from a citizen’s call about two suspected undocumented migrants loading into a pickup is entered on the map. The closest mobile unit pulls in behind the pickup. The agent immediately runs searches concerning the vehicle license plates, and after receiving positive results on the records checks, a traffic stop is affected. The agent begins to question the driver and the two passengers and notices that the passengers match the description of the two “got aways” reported earlier. He runs the name and identification of each passenger in a federated query against local, state, and federal databases. The rapid response comes back with a positive history of immigration violations, as well as records of criminal violations. With probable cause established, the three men are taken into custody for further processing. When their fingerprints are run and other national databases are checked, one of the prisoners is found to be on a Terrorist Watch List, under a different name and identification."
Implementing these high value use cases requires large amounts of information to be formatted properly with the correct Meta attributes. Creating a model like NIEN is a big start to making that a possibility.