Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium

Last updated

Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium - NCOIC
TypeNon-profit
Industry Telecommunications
Founded2004;19 years ago (2004)
Key people
Harry D. Raduege, chief executive officer
Website https://www.ncoic.org

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) is an international not-for-profit, chartered in the United States, whose goal is to facilitate the adoption of cross-domain interoperability standards. [1] Formed in September 2004, the organization is composed of more than 50 members and advisors representing business, government organizations and academic institutions in 12 countries. [2]

NCO is the application of the fundamental tenets of network-centric warfare to aspects of national security, especially industry support for the missions of both the United States Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). NCOIC does not only subscribe to the military use of this theory, but also works to apply NCO and interoperability across nations and industries, including emergency response, health care, aerospace, information technology cyber security & cloud computing, energy and financial services.

NCOIC's technical teams have developed resources to further the use of network-centric systems and interoperability in both the public and private sectors. These resources – including processes, tools, frameworks, patterns, principles and databases—are available free of charge on the NCOIC website. They are aimed at helping an organization lower engineering costs, speed program implementation, increase capability and reduce risk. The consortium also provides training and services such as interoperability demonstrations, acquisition strategies, evaluations and verification.

NCOIC focuses on four interdependent areas in identifying solutions that will enable cross-domain interoperability: business, culture, governance and technical. The interaction, influence and impact of factors—such as financial objectives, business goals, laws and regulations, and cultural considerations – are all taken into account when planning and/or implementing technology change.

Key Technical Resources

Systems, Capabilities, Operations, Programs, & Enterprises (SCOPE) Model • The SCOPE interoperability assessment model is designed to characterize interoperability-relevant aspects or capabilities of a system or set of systems over a network in terms of a set of dimensions and values along those dimensions. [3]

NCOIC Interoperability Framework (NIF) • The NIF is a development framework that helps system architects and system engineers to embed interoperability elements throughout the life cycle of programs, beginning with requirements. Whenever possible, those resources are based upon standards. [4]

Net Centric Patterns • NCOIC Net Centric Patterns contain prescriptive recommendations on approaches and standards in specific interoperability domains. [5]

Network Centric Analysis Tool (NCAT) • NCAT is a collaborative, web-enabled questionnaire-based tool developed to assist NCOIC teams and member companies to enhance the likelihood and reduce the time and effort of member companies developing interoperable systems consistent with customers' policies and guidelines, reference models and architectures. It is also available in an excel format. [6]

NCOIC QuadTrangle • The QuadTrangle™ developed by the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium shows the four, interdependent areas that must be considered when developing a reliable and trusted interoperable environment: business, culture, governance and technical. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interoperability</span> Ability of systems to work with each other

Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system-to-system performance.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for cybersecurity, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), emergency management, cloud computing, legal data exchange, energy, content technologies, and other areas.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is a software design approach for the development of software systems. It provides a set of guidelines for the structuring of specifications, which are expressed as models. Model Driven Architecture is a kind of domain engineering, and supports model-driven engineering of software systems. It was launched by the Object Management Group (OMG) in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise integration</span>

Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which is focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments.

Network-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations or net-centric warfare, is a military doctrine or theory of war that aims to translate an information advantage, enabled partly by information technology, into a competitive advantage through the computer networking of dispersed forces. It was pioneered by the United States Department of Defense in the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Defense Architecture Framework</span> Enterprise architecture framework

The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is an architecture framework for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that provides visualization infrastructure for specific stakeholders concerns through viewpoints organized by various views. These views are artifacts for visualizing, understanding, and assimilating the broad scope and complexities of an architecture description through tabular, structural, behavioral, ontological, pictorial, temporal, graphical, probabilistic, or alternative conceptual means. The current release is DoDAF 2.02.

A federal enterprise architecture framework (FEAF) is the U.S. reference enterprise architecture of a federal government. It provides a common approach for the integration of strategic, business and technology management as part of organization design and performance improvement.

The British Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework (MODAF) was an architecture framework which defined a standardised way of conducting enterprise architecture, originally developed by the UK Ministry of Defence. It has since been replaced with the NATO Architecture Framework.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise architecture framework</span> Frame in which the architecture of a company is defined

An enterprise architecture framework defines how to create and use an enterprise architecture. An architecture framework provides principles and practices for creating and using the architecture description of a system. It structures architects' thinking by dividing the architecture description into domains, layers, or views, and offers models – typically matrices and diagrams – for documenting each view. This allows for making systemic design decisions on all the components of the system and making long-term decisions around new design requirements, sustainability, and support.

Semantic interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange data with unambiguous, shared meaning. Semantic interoperability is a requirement to enable machine computable logic, inferencing, knowledge discovery, and data federation between information systems.

A cross-domain solution (CDS) is an integrated information assurance system composed of specialized software, and sometimes hardware, that provides a controlled interface to manually or automatically enable and/or restrict the access or transfer of information between two or more security domains based on a predetermined security policy. CDSs are designed to enforce domain separation and typically include some form of content filtering, which is used to designate information that is unauthorized for transfer between security domains or levels of classification, such as between different military divisions, intelligence agencies, or other operations which depend on the timely sharing of potentially sensitive information.

Capability management is a high-level management function, with particular application in the context of defense.

ISO/TC 223 Societal security was a technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization formed in 2001 to develop standards in the area of societal security: i.e. protection of society from and response to incidents, emergencies, and disasters caused by intentional and unintentional human acts, natural hazards, and technical failures.

Network Centric Product Support (NCPS) is an early application of an Internet of Things (IoT) computer architecture developed to leverage new information technologies and global networks to assist in managing maintenance, support and supply chain of complex products made up of one or more complex systems, such as in a mobile aircraft fleet or fixed location assets such as in building systems. This is accomplished by establishing digital threads connecting the physical deployed subsystem with its design Digital Twins virtual model by embedding intelligence through networked micro-web servers that also function as a computer workstation within each subsystem component (i.e. Engine control unit on an aircraft) or other controller and enabling 2-way communications using existing Internet technologies and communications networks - thus allowing for the extension of a product lifecycle management (PLM) system into a mobile, deployed product at the subsystem level in real time. NCPS can be considered to be the support flip side of Network-centric warfare, as this approach goes beyond traditional logistics and aftermarket support functions by taking a complex adaptive system management approach and integrating field maintenance and logistics in a unified factory and field environment. Its evolution began out of insights gained by CDR Dave Loda (USNR) from Network Centric Warfare-based fleet battle experimentation at the US Naval Warfare Development Command (NWDC) in the late 1990s, who later lead commercial research efforts of NCPS in aviation at United Technologies Corporation. Interaction with the MIT Auto-ID Labs, EPCglobal, the Air Transport Association of America ATA Spec 100/iSpec 2200 and other consortium pioneering the emerging machine to machine Internet of Things (IoT) architecture contributed to the evolution of NCPS.

The Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) is a suite of XML-based messaging standards that facilitate emergency information sharing between government entities and the full range of emergency-related organizations. EDXL standardizes messaging formats for communications between these parties. EDXL was developed as a royalty-free standard by the OASIS International Open Standards Consortium.

Enterprise interoperability is the ability of an enterprise—a company or other large organization—to functionally link activities, such as product design, supply chains, manufacturing, in an efficient and competitive way.

Model Driven Interoperability (MDI) is a methodological framework, which provides a conceptual and technical support to make interoperable enterprises using ontologies and semantic annotations, following model driven development (MDD) principles.

The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment was formed in 2010 to define an open avionics environment for all military airborne platform types. Today, it is a real-time software-focused professional group made up of industry suppliers, customers, academia, and users. The FACE approach is a government-industry software standard and business strategy for acquisition of affordable software systems that promotes innovation and rapid integration of portable capabilities across programs. The FACE Consortium provides a vendor-neutral forum for industry and government to work together to develop and consolidate the open standards, best practices, guidance documents, and business strategy necessary to result in:

Cross-domain interoperability exists when organizations or systems from different domains interact in information exchange, services, and/or goods to achieve their own or common goals. Interoperability is the method of systems working together (inter-operate). A domain in this instance is a community with its related infrastructure, bound by common purpose and interests, with consistent mutual interactions or rules of engagement that is separable from other communities by social, technical, linguistic, professional, legal or sovereignty related boundaries. The capability of cross-domain interoperability is becoming increasingly important as business and government operations become more global and interdependent. Cross-domain interoperability enables synergy, extends product utility and enables users to be more effective and successful within their own domains and the combined effort.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Industrial Internet Consortium</span> Trade organization

The Industrial Internet Consortium rebranded as the Industry IoT Consortium in August 2021. The Industry IoT Consortium is a program of the Object Management Group (OMG).

References

  1. Kenyon, H. (September 30, 2010). "NCOIC's efforts toward product interoperability are showing promise". Washington Technology. Archived from the original on December 5, 2021.
  2. ASDNews, "Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium -NCOIC- Launch", Aerospace & Defense News, 2004.[ dead link ]
  3. Richard Creps, Et Al. "SCOPE", Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, 2008.[ dead link ]
  4. Bowler, Mark (June 2008). "NIF and Net-centric Pattern Overview". Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium. Archived from the original on May 11, 2019.
  5. Legrand, Walter. "Net-centric Patterns". Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium. Archived from the original on May 11, 2019.
  6. Schneider, Todd (April 2010). "NCAT Overview". Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium. Archived from the original on May 11, 2019.
  7. "NCOIC QuadTrangle". Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium. Archived from the original on May 11, 2019.