The mission of the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) is to provide a national secure and trusted platform for information sharing and collaboration between Federal, State, local, tribal, territorial, private-sector, and international partners engaged in preventing, protecting against, responding to, and recovering from all threats, hazards, and incidents within the authority of DHS.  Through its common, interoperable information technology (IT) architecture, HSIN enables these homeland security partners to gather, fuse, analyze, and report information about threats, hazards, and incidents.  These activities ultimately provide homeland security partners with the best possible information to plan, coordinate, and conduct operations during the entire spectrum of homeland security activities.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses HSIN as its primary information sharing and collaboration platform.  In order to conduct the necessary information sharing and collaboration activities, DHS has established six primary National-level communities of interest (COIs): Federal Operations, Emergency Management, Law Enforcement, Intelligence, International, and Critical Sectors.  Through these National-level COIs, DHS assembles reporting from homeland security partners, prepares and disseminates National-level reports and plans, processes requests for information, communicates key senior-level decisions, and conducts other information sharing and collaboration activities necessary for executing its mission.

DHS is currently engaged in developing a next generation HSIN (HSIN-NextGen) platform that will replace the current HSIN implementation.  The vision of this HSIN-NextGen is as a national information sharing and collaboration platform that:

• Serves as a conduit to unclassified data and analysis regarding people, places, things, events, resources and activities.
  
  
• Is lawfully owned and maintained by DHS and other domestic and international users in a mission partnership with DHS.
  
  
• Is shared in a multi-directional, trusted, and secure environment.

Serves the purpose of supporting missions to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all threats, hazards, and incidents included within the official scope of DHS authority.