COI Resources | Governance
and Guidance | COI
Examples
COI Newsletter | COI Links | COI Help
Introduction. 1
Q1:
What is a COI?. 2
Q2: Why would a COI form?. 3
Q3:
How will the concepts of the Data Strategy be formalized within the
Department and what will that do for the COI?. 4
Q4:
How are COIs funded?. 4
Q5:
What things should a COI do?. 5
Q6:
What things might a COI do to be effective?. 5
Q7:
How do COIs relate to other entities?. 6
Q8:
How should COIs work within the Domain governance process?. 7
Q9:
What are the criteria for qualifying as a COI?. 8
Q10:
Who do I contact if I want to find out additional information about
interesting COIs or how to start a COI?. 8
The DoD Net-Centric Data
Strategy outlines the vision for managing data in the Net-Centric
environment known as the Global Information Grid (GIG). The Net-Centric goals that drive the
Data Strategy focus on empowering users by ensuring all data are visible,
accessible, and understandable across the GIG. To achieve the Net-Centric data
goals, the Data Strategy acknowledges that there are formal and informal
constructs within the Department for managing data. The formal construct uses DoD
Issuances, such as directives to instruct DoD Components on their
responsibilities with respect to achieving the data objectives. Informal collaborative constructs,
such as working groups, task forces, and tiger teams contribute greatly to
shared information within the Department and therefore will also be used to
achieve data objectives. The
Data Strategy uses Communities Of Interest (COIs) as the general term to
describe the collaborative constructs.
The document is written in
the “Question and Answer” format to address Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) pertaining to COIs, and to convey lessons learned in the
Department’s drive toward Net-Centricity. This “living” document
addresses both current and future capabilities envisioned to support COI
information sharing activities and will be updated as needed. It will be posted to the shared
space via the DKO
Portal and the Assistant Secretary
of Defense Network Information Integration (ASD (NII)) public home page. For additional information please
contact the COI
Help Desk.
NOTE: It is
important to note that the scope of this FAQ is limited to COIs and their relationship
to data activities in the Net-Centric DoD environment.
COI is a term used to describe any collaborative group
of users who must exchange information in pursuit of their shared goals,
interests, missions, or business processes, and who therefore must have
shared vocabulary for the information they exchange. The COI concept is very broad, and
covers an enormous number of potential groups of every kind and size. Any element of a DoD Component,
e.g., domain, organization, task force, project team or group who must
exchange information may be considered a “COI”. For example, every task-oriented
workgroup (e.g. the bomb damage assessment cell at the Air Operations
Center) can be a
COI. Any collection of people
with a declared interest (e.g. in biological warfare) can also be a
COI.
COI membership may include various data owners and
producers (e.g. developers, program managers, subject matter experts,
users, etc.) that need to share the same semantic knowledge. Participants may represent organizations
outside of DoD (NASA, Department of Homeland Security, etc.), or allied and
coalition partners (NATO, Japan,
etc.). A COI has the latitude
to define an appropriate mechanism to manage COI membership. COI membership can be voluntary or
mandatory depending on the roles of the participants. A participant’s involvement
may change throughout the lifecycle of the COI. Initial membership may include the
managerial level at the Joint Staff, Military Services, broad OSD
representation, selected Defense Agency and Combatant Commands. However, as the effort progresses
from the planning stage to a more technical focus, the membership may
require greater technical and functional representation. For example, if you think your COI
will impact acquisition, then acquisition organizations should be
encouraged to participate. COIs
have the flexibility to engage a range of known participants at various
intervals throughout COI lifecycle activities to ensure user requirements are
adequately addressed. The
chartering process may be a mechanism to solicit the appropriate membership
at all levels, as needed.
COIs can exhibit a diverse range of characteristics
depending on the community’s mission or objectives. The figure below illustrates some of
the more prevalent COI characteristics and descriptive terms such as
“Expedient”, “Institutional”,
“Functional” and “Cross-Functional” used to
characterize COIs.
![](help.shtml_files/image002.jpg)
Expedient COIs typically exploit existing resources
(data assets) produced and exposed to the enterprise for discovery and
reuse. These resources include
vocabulary, developed applications, and other data assets. An example of an expedient COI may
be a joint task force that uses data available to the network to generate
new intelligence and planning scenarios. Institutional COIs tend to conduct
activities such as develop vocabularies to provide a common understanding
of terms used within the community, develop logical data models, register
community specific extensions to discovery metadata schemas, and identify
other data-related capabilities and services. An example of an institutional COI
might be a health affairs community that is defining shared medical codes
for Department wide use.
Cross-Functional is the idea of Functional Areas, for instance,
Heath Affairs, Personnel & Readiness and Environmental working together
to address data issues or topics that cross the boundaries of a single
Functional Area.
Another way to characterize COIs is the persistence of
the data or activities. Certain
COIs may convene just a few collaboration sessions to complete their tasks,
while longer term COIs may persist for years because there is a continuing
need for their mission. It is
up to the community members or the tasking authority to determine how long
a COI should persist.
A COI is formed whenever someone or a group decides
there is value in establishing a community. For instance, someone with authority
could direct the formation of a COI team to work a specific issue or individuals
from different organizations could voluntarily form a COI team to address
an issue that is common to the organizations. COI formations may occur
in a "bottom-up" fashion, through the voluntary cooperation of
the participants. They
may also be formed through a "top-down" tasking.
An example of a “top-down” COI is Global
Force Management (GFM). The
challenge facing them was that DoD could not provide accurate, timely and
authoritative GFM data to senior leadership regarding current locations,
operational availability, and event data, among other data. As a result of this assessment by
the J8 and others dealing with GFM issues, the GFM COI was established at
the direction of the Director J8, Joint Staff. The USD (P&R) accepted to
co-chair the effort and further the Defense Readiness Reporting effort.
Q3: How will the concepts of the Data
Strategy be formalized within the Department and what will that do for the
COI?
ASD (NII) will provide guidance and strategic support
to DoD Components as part of a Department wide collaborative effort to
institutionalize the Data Strategy concepts, such as facilitating data
sharing through COIs and ensuring that a governance structure is in place
so that COIs can form and operate effectively (see Q7, Q8). Guidance will be in the form of DoD
issuances, which may include directives, procedures, handbooks, or manuals
to formalize the implementation of net-centric policies. For example, the DoD Net-Centric
Data Sharing Directive and supporting issuances are currently under
development with an anticipated formal coordination of the Directive in
June 2004. The issuance on COIs
will provide generic guidance in regard to the establishment of COIs, to
include the appropriate reference Department documentation and
instructions, both for education and guidance. This COI FAQ documentation will be
updated as needed to address COI related questions.
Formalizing the DoD Net-Centric Data Strategy content
in DoD issuances will codify the COI concept thereby making it a
recognizable entity within the Department. The issuance will recognize the COI
as an entity(s) to participate in the Department’s net-centric
environment via the Domain governance process. Strategic support to the COIs will
take form in a variety of activities and initiatives such as publishing
discovery specifications to increase data asset visibility, developing a
data asset catalog specification (future) to identify and locate data
assets, developing a Enterprise COI Directory (see Q6) to provide visibility
and collaboration with COIs.
An additional activity to
promote the COI concepts may be to host a semi-annual COI conference,
symposiums or colloquiums to discuss matters of mutual interest, and
provide future direction regarding DoD CIO data strategies, policies and
procedures, share lessons learned, etc.
There is no central pot of "COI funds". DoD Components must continue to
budget/plan and manage their resources to include data according to the
guidance of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and
Executing (PPBE) processes laid out by the Department".
If a COI is established through a Domain, the Domain
portfolio management process will ensure resources are allocated to support
the COI activities. COIs that
form without being directed by a Domain should align themselves with an
appropriate Domain(s) to leverage the capabilities provided by
Domains.
While COI members are working together to accomplish their shared objectives,
there are additional data and information-related activities that they are
encouraged to do in order to support the net-centric environment.
1. Make their data assets
visible and accessible
Data owners/producers are responsible for making their data assets visible,
accessible, and understandable.
COIs can “expose” their
data assets within the COI or across the Enterprise by tagging their data assets
with discovery metadata, and posting those metadata to searchable
catalogs. Posting metadata to a
searchable catalog allows the authorized catalog user to browse the
catalog, locate the data asset and learn enough information about the data
asset to determine whether the associated data asset(s) fulfill the
user’s needs. Data asset
owners who are not part of a COI may work with one or more COIs to
negotiate shared metadata development/catalog ownership or negotiate with
an existing catalog owner to host their discovery metadata.
All discovery metadata shared with the Enterprise must be
DDMS-compliant to ensure data assets are consistently described to aid the
Enterprise-wide discovery capability.
For information on the DDMS, please visit the DoD Metadata Registry
and follow the DDMS information link.
2. Define
COI-specific vocabularies and taxonomies
Shared vocabularies and
taxonomies promote the semantic and syntactic understanding of data assets.
Vocabularies include terms
common within the COI and the associated definition of each term. Vocabularies help people understand
what terms mean within that community.
Vocabularies should also be developed to support machine-to-machine
understanding of data elements.
Taxonomies are categorization and classification schemes that the
COI uses to group and relate its data assets. COIs are encouraged to develop and
share vocabularies and taxonomies that best reflect the community’s
understanding of their shared data.
Both vocabularies and taxonomies should be registered in the DoD
Metadata Registry to increase metadata visibility across the Enterprise and to
promote possible reuse.
3. Register semantic and structural
metadata to the DoD Metadata Registry
It is important that data structures, data definitions,
data models, and other forms of semantic and structural metadata are
registered in the DoD Metadata Registry for visibility and reuse. In doing so, other communities and
users throughout the DoD can find related constructs used to develop
systems and to exchange information.
By reusing existing metadata, systems and exchange formats tend to
require less mediation or transformation. Additionally, by posting metadata to
the DoD Metadata Registry, COIs can work together to converge on metadata
specifications/standards that support many functions across the Department.
In addition to the activities described in Question #5,
there are additional activities that may be of value in supporting the
COI’s mission.
· Develop COI standard briefing to include at a minimum
the COI problem set, requirements, architectures, membership, tasks ahead
and roadmap to achieving the tasks.
This briefing may serve as an educational tool for users to:
1) Understand the CIO vision,
problem, and timeline for implementation.
2) Identify requirements for the COI to include data
requirements.
3) Understand what COI products will be produced.
· Develop a charter for their community. Objectives, persistent data service
obligations, and large community memberships are some examples that may
prompt a COI to consider developing their own charter to formally declare
the scope of their mission, and define the rules and processes that govern
their activities. The rules may
entail managing changes to the community-defined metadata such as DDMS
extensions, shared vocabulary, etc.
· Identify requirements for new capabilities, services or
content and feed those requirements into the governance processes via the
Domain owners (see Q7). Such
community feedback will help refine future net-centric support for COIs.
· Inventory data assets that fall within the sphere of
interest of the community so that they can readily be “tagged”
and exposed. By producing this
inventory, COI members (data owners/producers/consumers) can then begin to
identify other related data assets that may be of interest to them.
· Extend the DDMS for COI specific discovery metadata.
The extensible layer of the DDMS allows the COIs to extend the core layers
of the DDMS with COI specific discovery metadata to support their
mission-specific metadata requirements.
· Register their existence and membership in an
Enterprise COI Directory. The
COI Directory is a future capability that will provide descriptive
information about the COI, such as its mission and participants. COIs may benefit from advertising
their existence in the COI Directory by making their mission known to a
broader part of the Enterprise, thereby benefiting from possible increased
assistance. Additional
information on the COI Directory will be provided as it becomes available.
Domains—Domains are defined as subsets of mission areas
and represent a common collection of related, or highly associated,
information capabilities and services.
The domain manages portfolios of information capabilities and
services. Portfolio management
of information capabilities and services within domains improve
coordination, collaboration, integration, and consistency of processes and
interfaces for information sharing.
This portfolio management construct is used to influence
investments, requirements, and acquisitions related to IT and NSS
systems. Domains ensure
necessary capabilities are planned (e.g., metadata catalogs, metadata
registries, etc.) and in place to form and operate COIs effectively. Since Domains cover the entire
Department, every COI should fall within the scope of one or more Domains and
thus be able to leverage the capabilities provided by that Domain if
needed. COIs who have requirements for new capabilities, services and/or
content may put forward their requirement to a Domain owner to be moved
through the requirements, acquisition and resource allocation
processes. The Domain and COI
may develop an agreement or process to help maintain COI products (e.g.,
common data model, COI-specific vocabulary, etc).
Mission Areas—Mission Areas are supersets of Domains, i.e., a
larger scope portfolio of IT and NSS investments. Mission Area is a defined area
of responsibility whose functions and processes contribute to
accomplishment of the mission. (DEPSECDEF Memo, Subject: IT Portfolio Management, March 22,
2004). The term is identified
here for completeness but Mission Areas will have little direct influence
on COIs.
DoD
Components—DoD Components relate
to COIs and their members in many ways (e.g., users, data producers,
process owners, system operators, system owners). They fund, develop and operate most
of the systems that produce data assets. They can sponsor a COI by providing
the resources (e.g., personnel, etc.) needed to accomplish the required
tasks and are responsible for implementing the tools needed for
“tagging” and posting of data assets; in particular, they may
be members of a COI or they may use a COI’s registered metadata
(e.g., if COI develops a logical model for translating between vocabularies
used by the COI, then a developer may utilize that model for translation to
share information with another system). COIs will promote the use of
metadata, use of web services to expose data and the registration of
metadata among these project managers, developers and system owners. COIs typically will have an
“influencing” role rather than a directing role in regards to
these entities.
Namespace
Managers— Namespace, as it
relates to the DoD Metadata Registry, is defined as collections of data
constructs that share a common context. This context may be technical such
as “Imagery” or operational such as “Messaging.” In
essence, a Namespace (or group of related Namespaces) is organized around a
community that is able to agree on a common vocabulary. Each Namespace has a manager who has
a stake in the syntax, semantics and other conventions concerning a
specific collection of metadata.
Namespace Managers are responsible for acquiring and
governing metadata information resources for designated Namespaces (note: a
single Metadata Manager may have authority over multiple Namespaces). They
may establish and chair working groups as required to coordinate the
metadata management activities.
The Metadata Manager represents their COI in metadata working groups
and are also encouraged to participate in industry groups developing
vocabularies and other components pertinent to their areas of interest.
Every COI should be affiliated with at least one Domain
to ensure necessary capabilities are in place to facilitate semantic understanding. COIs may be tightly coupled to a
Domain (e.g., they are established by a Domain) or loosely coupled as a
result of the communities' interest falling within the scope of a Domain. For example, an institutional COI
may be formally tasked through the sponsoring Domain or subordinate
component(s); hence, the COI will need to operate through the portfolio
management construct of their sponsor(s). Such COIs may have authority from
explicit chartering, or implied authority as a result of existing
Organizational structures (see Q7 on COI relationship to Domains).
The intent of Domain governance process is to leverage
existing processes for defining, resourcing, and acquiring capabilities
against the context of portfolios of related capabilities rather than by
platform or program. Domains
are responsible for ensuring the necessary capabilities to form and operate
COIs are planned and programmed for, and assigned to a Domain manager. Institutional COIs work through
Domain managers from their affiliated Domains to obtain the authority and
resource to accomplish their mission.
Expedient COIs may operate through implied or derived authority
(loosely coupled to a Domain); however, if the COIs have a long-term
operational focus, then they may need to work through their
organization’s chain of command to find their sponsors.
Specific details on how COIs will operate under the
Domain governance and portfolio management processes are still being
finalized. When the details
become available, they will be collected and integrated in the COI FAQ.
There are no specific criteria for
‘qualifying’ as a COI.
Any group of users who must exchange information may be a COI. Also, there is no “special process”
for designating or establishing a COI.
The Net-Centric Data Strategy encourages COIs to take the initiative
in providing the organization and maintenance construct.
For additional information please send e-mail to: COI_HelpDesk@osd.mil
|