NATIONAL INFORMATION EXCHANGE MODEL
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The NIEM Community

The NIEM Community includes domains and communities of interest (COIs) that represent a large, diverse user base.

Domains

Picture noting the communities that have content in the NIEM model: Justice, Maritime, MilOps, Screening, Surface Transportation, Biometrics, CBRN, CFYS, Emergency Management, Human Services, Immigration, Infastructure Protection, Intelligence, International Trade, Cyber. Participation in the NIEM community spans federal, state, local, tribal, private sector, and international.NIEM domains are formally established communities with executive stewards to represent the stakeholders, governance, and data model content oriented around their respective business needs. Domains manage reusable, community-specific content in the model and participate in NIEM governance at large. Each domain represents individuals and organizations that cut across all levels of government, industry, and the international community. Learn more about domain goverance.

NIEM currently has data model content for 15 domains. However, depending on business needs and model content, there are opportunities for communities to create new domains in the future. 

Communities of Interest (COIs)

COIs are made up of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or interest in a topic and eventually come together based on the need to exchange information. You do not need to be aligned to a formal domain to use NIEM—you can also be a part of a COI.

COIs collectively define their needs, work with established domains to develop exchange content, and standardize their information exchanges to NIEM. COIs can be composed of multiple domains, a sub-set of a single domain, or not aligned to any domains if they only leverage NIEM’s universal core elements.

How COIs use NIEM depends on their business needs. For example, a multi-faceted issue, such as human trafficking, includes stakeholders from the Justice, Human Services, and Immigration domains. On the other hand, a broadly scoped domain, such as the Maritime domain, could contain multiple COIs such as Coastal Defense, Marine Protection, and Fisheries. If appropriate or necessary, COIs may eventually consider becoming an established domain.

For general NIEM information, visit the About NIEM page.  For more details about the benefits NIEM can bring to your organization, visit the Value of NIEM page.