Uncertainty is the hallmark of 21st century national security. As proven time and again, no one organization or agency operates alone to address these challenges. It is through the efforts of many, both internal and external to government, that we find success. Partnerships may be predetermined, or completely unanticipated. To succeed, timely and trusted information must be accessible by the team and shared among mission partners. It is the sharing of information that lies at the heart of our future security.
The ability to share information remains hampered by data stovepipes and incompatible systems that cannot talk to each other. Sharing is highly dependent upon point-to-point connections, and errorprone manual data entry and reentry. What if we could break the barriers to information sharing? What if we could exchange basic data more effectively with our current infrastructure? How would we do that and what would it look like?
Historically, programs have defined their own vocabularies and information exchange schemas, limiting the amount of understandable information that can be shared outside of tightly coupled interfaces.
In 2007, the chief information officers from the departments of Defense (DoD), Justice (DoJ), Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), with participation from the program manager for the Information Sharing Environment and the White House Office of Management and Budget, formed an Executive Steering Committee to address these issues. The committee was tasked to define requirements and develop an information exchange specification that could be used by all agencies and their information sharing partners. This specification is known as the Universal Core.
UCore V2.0 evolved from the successful information sharing efforts developed and adopted by UCore government partners and industry. The Navy accepted the role as DoD lead and has served as overall co-lead for the federal effort. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command is providing engineering leadership on behalf of the Navy. By leveraging lessons learned and reusing products and processes from various efforts, such as the National Information Exchange Model, Cursor on Target and Strike Community of Interest, the team kept costs low, maintained a demanding schedule and ensured UCore was compatible with existing infrastructures.
UCore enables information sharing by defining an implementation specification (XML Schema) that contains agreed upon representations for the most commonly shared and universally understood concepts of "who," "what," "when," and "where." UCore is simple to explain, understand and implement, containing a minimal set of objects with broad applicability across a wide range of domains. UCore is built on an extensible framework that permits users to build more detailed exchanges tailored to their mission or business requirements. The UCore validation processes and tools provide a means to consistently achieve definable levels of interoperability and promote machine understanding between anticipated and unanticipated users.
Released on March 31, 2009, UCore V2.0 ultimately involved almost 500 members from across the federal government and industry who contributed to its design, development, testing and evaluation over an 18-month period. This not only ensured the requirements from many stakeholders in the federal government were considered, but also significantly reduced risk and helped socialize the effort as it was being refined. Today there are more than 1,000 registered UCore users. Organizations are using or evaluating UCore in the context of a variety of important national missions including combating improvised explosive devices, ballistic missile defense, counterterrorism and maritime domain awareness.
UCore is breaking the barriers to information sharing both from a technical and an organizational standpoint. UCore has proven the ability of federal agencies to come together to solve complex information sharing issues despite organizational and financial boundaries.
In January 2009, DoD, DHS, DoJ and ODNI were honored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement for their collaborative work on UCore and its contribution to network-centric warfare. This is a tribute to the strong leadership provided by the federal CIOs, the commitment of the services and agencies in the partner departments, and the incredible technical talent that coalesced around this small but important effort from all levels of government and our industry partners.
Dan Green is the DoD co-lead for UCore.