A brief overview of the OMG's C4I Domain Task Force's work plan.

The goal of developing well integrated and interoperable emergency management systems that can bridge a diverse mixture of national and international, government and non-government, private and public sector organizations poses a truly daunting challenge. This presentation will briefly outline some first small steps being taken by the Centre for Security Sciences towards promoting S&T on interoperable tools to support emergency management.
 

Public Safety Canada - Multi-Agency Situational Awareness
Marc Pelosse 

The Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System (MASAS) will enable emergency management practitioners to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of emergency incidents. By improving interoperability among various systems, MASAS will allow for the timely sharing of geospatially referenced information. This presentation will provide an overview of Public Safety Canada's initiative to build the MASAS, including the GeoConnections-supported partnership approach to working with federal, provincial, and territorial stakeholders.
 

This presentation will cover location based information or geoStandards that are being implemented throughout the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI). These geoStandards and related technology solutions both support interoperable decision support tools and applications being used by communities such as the Public Safety and Security.

An overview, with real-life illustrations, of the importance of interoperability amongst first responders is provided. While the primary focus is on communications interoperability, examples and insight on the need for interoperable data exchange systems to support first responder capabilities will be provided.

The success of missions is largely determined by superior technology and better, faster, and reactive information exchange. Networked IT systems have the power to make timely quality operations information available, which improves reactive coordination and command & control. This communications process based on an integrated, networked IT infrastructure includes several main on-going activities: information collection, information processing, and information dissemination. Information security for information sharing is a major concern, because the success of the entire operation often depends on the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the communications. Most agencies are very aware of the need for good communications and information sharing. The complexity of IT security policy management is to a large extent due to the many different (also legacy) platforms and security technologies that need to be managed, as well as due to frequent operational/IT changes. This complex environment makes it hard to enforce and administer a uniform, coherent, organization-wide security policy across the many different systems used today by many agencies. We will provide an overview of how model driven approaches (model driven security, model driven architecture, model driven engineering) can be used to manage security in such agile, complex environments without a maintenance explosion. Particular focus will be given to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), an architectural approach that is being procured. Other approaches such as DDS will also be covered.

Events after the attack on the World Trade Center has strengthened the resolve of NATO Allies to make a shift in the old security policy of "need-to-know" to a "need-to-share". These Cross Domain Systems (CDS) have to provide for the timely flow of sensitive and classified data among coalition partners during prosecution of the global war on terrorism. The MILS Architecture is an approach that includes the use of Open Standard, Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) Common Criteria evaluated technologies and products to meet this multi-national, multilevel, multi-corporation requirement. 
 

Over the next number of years, DND will be re-architecting its information environment: from the current amalgamation of stovepipe information systems (IS) to one that enables information centric operations; from one that relies on unstructured information, or at best semi-structured information – to a structured information environment; and from one that is primarily limited to domain specific operation to one that can seamlessly support joint, allied, inter-agency and coalition network centric operations. A central element in this effort the protection of sensitive information and the assurance that decision makers have all the available relevant information - independent of their location.
Enterprise Information Security Environment (EISE) project is developing practices and solutions to address the link between information architecture (ontology/semantics) and the information security requirements of the DND/CF. This session will outline the results of these efforts in relationship for deployed operations such as those faced by next generation emergency management systems. 

As the IM community seeks increasing levels of interoperability and trusted sharing of information - there is a growing need for off-the-shelf solutions which adhere to specifications and standards which have wide acceptance across multiple domains. The over arching concept for an Information Exchange Framework or IEF came out of work over the past few years within the OMG and companion standards organizations, such as the W3C and The Open Group; and the need to start integrating the resulting standards into usable frameworks that can be more easily adopted by the user communities.
Within the OMG RTESS and MARS Platform Task Forces there has been an evolution in middleware specification and of information exchange mechanisms such as the Data Distribution Services (DDS) for Real-Time. The incorporation of the BPMI into the OMG portfolio, means that we now have a mechanisms to develop policy based services. Within several Domain Task Forces (DTFs), such as C4I, Healthcare, Space, and Finance, there has been considerable effort to specify the ontologies, semantics, taxonomies and information design pattern for their respective communities.
And within the several of the Platform and Domain Special Interest Groups (PSIG/DSIG), such as Software Assurance (SwA) and Ontology, there has been additional work on standards that apply in the policy space.
We now see the opportunity to bring together some of these separate standardization efforts to provide for a general purpose solution with which to focus the common elements of the problem of policy based information exchange.

The critical nature, broad scope and shear physical scale of maritime security activities demand interagency and multinational cooperation and information sharing. Commanders and decision makers require timely and accurate information from a diverse set of national, private and public sources and partners. Understanding shared information is essential to building domain awareness and conducting effective coordinated security operations. The aggregation and sharing of situational awareness information must be complimented by an ability to share planning, status and coordination information across agencies and with national and private partners. Improved integrated maritime security processes and capabilities require new information agreements at the policy and technical levels. This paper discusses the overlap of maritime security and command and control and recommends leveraging the standardization work of the Multilateral Interoper-ability Programme (MIP).

The Shared Operational Picture Exchange Services (SOPES) is an evolution in architecture based approach to the delivery of information sharing and information assurance. SOPES has a pedigree that encompasses The Army Tactical Command and Control Information System (ATCCIS) and Multilateral Interoperability Programme (MIP). ATCCIS and MIP have motivated the growth of a community of nations seeking to develop a ability to share data in a trusted and secure manner: SOPES is seeking to build on this pedigree and develop open standards for this community.  This presentation will explore the fundamentals of SOPES and its lines back through the MIP and ATCCIS programmes.