An out-of-the-box solution for cost-effective, NIEM-conformant data sharing

The NIEM framework and LEXS standard provide a common language by which to communicate critical public safety and law enforcement information. While government agencies may fully intend to support the NIEM framework and conform to the LEXS standard, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that a considerable investment of resources, domain expertise, training, time, effort and cost is required.

Sypherlink understands the importance of compliance – and the challenges associated with conformance – and offers agencies a simplified, effective and cost-efficient solution.

Sypherlink NIEM HarmonizerTM allows government agencies of any size to share law enforcement data with other local, state and federal agencies. It also provides immediate conformance to NIEM, which has quickly become a requirement for grant funding.

A flexible approach

A component of the Sypherlink NIE Gateway solution, NIEM Harmonizer separates the data integration process from the application, allowing users to begin the data sharing process independently from the process of identifying and selecting end-user applications. In many cases, a single initiative may require multiple applications to support the needs of different constituencies. NIEM Harmonizer allows an umbrella approach where data is standardized across all of these environments with known, open, federal specifications, while supporting the needs to feed applications in the formats they require.

Sypherlink NIEM Harmonizer is modular and can be used on either ends of an integration scenario, depending on the circumstance. This flexibility means that NIEM Harmonizer can easily be dropped into place within an existing architecture, if one is already present, or used to setup new architectures from the ground up. NIEM Harmonizer can also be used to help transition existing architectures to more standardized ones based on NIEM, without having to rip and replace all legacy components.

Deployment options

To support these various needs, NIEM Harmonizer has two deployment modes based on a hub-spoke design:

• Harmonizer Spoke is designed to be placed at an end-point agency to provide a NIEM-based abstraction layer for an agency’s system. It transacts data into and out of the source system using NIEM as an intermediate standard.
• Harmonizer Hub provides functionality at the target end of an initiative. It provides functions to insert data into a warehouse or to initiate federated queries to connected systems. Though components can be used in tandem, each can function independently of the other.