DHS S&T under the office of Science and Engineering (OSE), Systems Engineering and Standards Division (SESD) awards A4SAFE Inc a 2-year contract to provide Data Management, Data Engineering and Data Standardization support services based on NIEM.GOV.

The DHS S&T SESD leads a comprehensive standard program to contribute to a more secure, safe, and resilient homeland through coordination with national and international standard bodies in developing standards for DHS mission needs.

A4SAFE will provide DHS S&T SESD through management and facilitation of NIEM Emergency Management (EM) domain technical support services. This includes increase adoption of approved data standardization within DHS and externally within the wider State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) communities and international resiliency and disaster response data and information exchange initiatives.

Founded in 2018, A4SAFE Inc. is headquartered in Virginia.  A4SAFE Inc. is a fast-growing Small Business company providing professional IT and Data Standards Services to the public and private sector.  A4SAFE Inc. has been recognized by its DHS and DoD and other clients as Data Standards Subject Matter Expert Company. These recognitions are due to the internal rigor and agility established by A4SAFE Inc.  Commitment, integrity, and excellence are values that all A4SAFE team members live by.  

The A4SAFE team brings a wealth of experience and insight into this project based on its current and past engagements performing similar work for organizations such as DoD J6 Data Standards Engineering PMO support, where we provide Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the areas of data Architecture, Exchange Development, Data Reengineering, Mission Critical Data Management Solution Modernization, Enterprise Architecture Alignment, Liaison and Outreach support to other DHS Components.

A4SAFE Inc. has significant hands-on experience with multi enterprise architecture solutions, internationally accepted data standards such as ANSI NIST, NIEM (National Information Exchange Model), Microservices (to decrease development and execution time), Blockchain engineering (for uniform sharing of data in-transit) and private/public/hybrid cloud security and elastic architecture.  

The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Business Architecture Committee (NBAC) Co-Chairs, Kamran Atri and Thomas Krul ask you to SAVE-THE-DATE for our 2021 NBAC Annual Meeting. 

This event includes seven (7) NIEM-rich sessions presented in a morning and afternoon format. The NIEM Community has the option of participating either in-person at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Arlington, VA or virtually via MS TEAMS on Tuesday, 14 September. Wednesday and Thursday are virtual MS TEAMS only sessions.

“IoT is only going to increase the velocity of the problems and make them harder to manage, prepare and be proactive. IoT simply increases the organization’s number of asset, alerts, and threat vectors, all of which requiring active assessment, evaluation, and mitigation. Its like a loud speaker that amplifies existing issues …”.

The purpose of the Emerging Technology Tiger team is to review emerging technologies, including current and planned projects, use/business cases to determine impact to NIEM Program or domains/members/stakeholders and alignment activity required.

A4SAFE led the briefing and covered both business and technical elements of The Standard Unified Modeling, Mapping, and Integration toolkit (SUMMIT), which is an innovative simulation platform that enables users to discover/reuse models and execute case studies to analyze emergency events. SUMMIT accelerates “what-If” analysis of disaster scenarios and improves the planning and execution of test run (exercises). The key features of SUMMIT are in reuse of models that have been integrated into the model library, an interface that helps non-programmers to compose scenarios, ability to rapidly test and compare disaster scenarios from one location to another. SUMMIT contains several case files that constitute synthetic data from analysis of response and recovery operations, trends, impacts, and risks. SUMMIT supports the National Preparedness System as described in the Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8) and has been transitioned into an operational environment for use in training, exercise, threat/hazard risk assessment, resilience, and other preparedness activities.

• External Link: Winter Simulation Conference 2018
• For more details, please visit A4SAFE.com Knowledge Base section.

A4SAFE Data Subject Matter Experts briefed the NIEM PMO and NIEM Business Architecture Committee (multiple Federal agencies and State and Local representations) on the impacts of upcoming GREAT Act Legislation and the data management changes required to ensure compliance.

The GREAT Act will involve over 23 Federal agencies and 50 States, whom issue grants funding to many recipients. The GREAT Act will transform federal grant reporting from disconnected documents into open data by directing the executive branch to adopt a standardized data structure for the information grantees must report to agencies. By replacing outdated documents with open data, the GREAT Act will deliver transparency for grant making agencies and the public. It will also allow grantees to automate their reporting processes and reduce compliance costs.

• (External Link): Summary of Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act of 2019

January 14, 2019: President Signs Government-wide Open Data Bill

President Trump signed into law the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking (FEBP) Act, which includes the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act (Title II). The Law (P.L. 115-435) will go into effect Monday, July 8, 2019, and we anticipate a large part of the implementation work being merged with the Administration’s ongoing Federal Data Strategy.

• (External Link): Data Coalition Submits Ideas to Inform the New Federal Data Strategy

January 17, 2019: GREAT Act Passes the House of Representatives

The House unanimously passed the bipartisan Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act (H.R. 150) as re-introduced by Representatives Virginia Foxx (NC-5-R) and Jimmy Gomez (CA-34-D).

• (External Link): C-SPAN – Watch GREAT Act (H.R. 150) unanimously passed the House of Representatives

• For more details, please visit A4SAFE.com Knowledge Base section.

This three day summit will bring together an audience comprised of 120+ Secretaries, Directors of Security Agencies, Heads of Acquisition, Biometric Program Managers and Industry Executives from the U.S. and regional partners for critical discussions on multimodal biometrics, the development of “touchless” sensing technology, securing the borders with innovative technology, information data accessibility and storage, investing in biometric solutions and strengthening national preparedness and resilience.

• External Link: Speaker Listing
• For more details, please visit A4SAFE.com Knowledge Base section.

Opening the event, NIEM Business Architecture Committee (NBAC) Co-Chair Kamran Atri conducted a wide-ranging session for an audience of approximately 80 attendees that braved heavy rain and cold temps to attend the event. Kamran’s session provided an overview of how NIEM has continued to be an integral tool in the information exchange arsenal of an increasing number of organizations around the globe.

• External Link: NIEM Biometrics Domain Offers NIEM Training During 2016 Global Identity Summit in Tampa