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

The domain of naval Combat Management Systems is characterized by a huge variety of underlying computing platforms, with different and often incompatible means of managing & reporting alerts. Standards-based alert management services are essential for interoperable and open systems. The specification of an alert data model, delivery and lifecycle management service is in the finalization stages currently.
 

The Canadian Navy is undertaking the modernization of the fleet with the start of four major ship programs: Joint Supply Ship (JSS), Halifax Class Modernization (HCM), Destroyer Replacement (DR) and Artic Off-shore Patrol (AOSP). As part of this modernization the Navy is seeking in dramatically enhance information interoperability, knowledge management, decision support and collaborative planning for a wide range of missions in joint, coalition and allied task groups. The modernization will require the Navy (as part of a Department of National Defence Effort) to engage in the development of open architecture and standardization efforts. 
This keynote address will identify near and mid-term Information management and technology direction in the areas of C4I interoperability, Information Management and Information Security.

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.
The 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 Naval CMS. 

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 standardization of tagging and labeling data provides the community a wide range of savings, from software to hardware.  Tagging and Labeling will influence the design, transmission and storage of information covering security related problems in Defense, Banking and Medical.  The effort to create standards will allow for cost savings as well as sharing of information between defense organizations across national boundaries.  The current OMG RFI is the first step in the process of designing standards for creating common solutions to support communications and system design.

The Multilateral Interoperability Programme (MIP) is a multinational community defining command and control information exchange standards that enable technical and semantic interoperability. The MIP community operational and technical consensus is captured as a standard data model, the Joint Consultation Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM). It is described in a set of documents, databases and IDEF1X models. Recent internal studies and discussion have made clear the need, and opportunity, for the MIP to evolve its internal business processes and move to a more formal and standardized architecture description and set of artifacts. US and other national efforts are being leveraged to prototype and assess an alternative approach to data model representation, configuration management and artifact production based on the OMG Model Driven Architecture (MDA) framework.. These efforts are evaluating and demonstrating the maturity of MDA tools, transforms and processes. Initial progress has been rapid and very positive producing a wide collection of useful artifacts and promising improved quality and reduced production and management effort.
 

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 an 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 programs.