"The development of NIEM is a joint effort among DOJ, DHS, and subject-matter experts from the justice, public safety, law enforcement, homeland security, and private sectors. Designed by experienced practitioners, governed by participating stakeholders, and driven by leadership from DOJ and DHS, NIEM is developing, disseminating, and supporting enterprise-wide information exchange standards and processes that enable jurisdictions to effectively share critical information in emergency situations, as well as support the day-to-day operations of agencies throughout the nation". To ensure the longevity and continued relevance of the HSEEP Data Exchange Standards, NED [National Exercise Division] has aligned its efforts in this area with work currently underway at NIEM. As mentioned above, NIEM evolved from a DHS and Department of Justice (DOJ) partnership. Its development was predicated on the need for these two agencies to share information quickly and accurately in areas where their business practices crossed paths, such as in cases of immigration and person screening. NIEM has since expanded to encompass seven domains, including emergency management, infrastructure protection and intelligence, each containing resources useful for any party needing to conduct information exchanges in these areas. Currently, a coordinated NIEM adoption process is underway throughout most DHS component agencies, with the DHS Enterprise Data Management Office (EDMO) guiding the effort. NED believes that leveraging existing NIEM products and resources, as well as participating as a stakeholder in the overarching DHS NIEM adoption process, provides value both by reducing expenditures that would be incurred by developing a proprietary data exchange standard and by providing stakeholders with access to a number of useful data exchange standard-related resources and tools. Because the HSEEP Data Exchange Standards are NIEMconformant, stakeholders are free to reuse any of its components, as well as any other component in any of the NIEM domains, to create unique data exchanges for purposes not directly related to HSEEP and that best serve their own needs. The overall concept, therefore, is to provide flexibility and utility while saving time and effort. The NIEM website contains a number of useful, non-technical, education and outreach resources for parties interested in understanding and applying NIEM and NIEM-conformant data exchange standards, such as the HSEEP Data Exchange Standard". (FEMA, NIEM Overview, Accessed March 27)