Take part in the Net-centric future
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Finding a better way to achieve interoperability has led businesses, governments, civil agencies and non-governmental organizations to consider how the principles of network centric operations (NCO) will enhance their day-to-day operations, and will allow them to collaborate when responding to the unexpected.
Because this transformation challenges product and system developers in all sectors and in all countries, the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) was founded in 2004 to serve as an "industry neutral" source of NCO guidance.
NCOIC is a not-for-profit international association of 100 companies and agencies who collaboratively advance interoperability by identifying open standards, patterns-of-use and best practices that lead to the successful implementation of NCO.
By scoping and analyzing systems with the NCOIC tools and applying NCOIC's patterns and building blocks, engineers, program managers, and others can develop solutions for legacy system interoperability and build interoperability into the DNA of new systems. The goal is any-to-any interoperability.
The challenge of emergency responder communications
For today's emergency responders, sharing emergency information takes a series of phone calls, a lot of duplication and precious time they can't afford to lose. Today, emergency communication is like using a telephone system without a phone book.
NCOIC recently announced findings of its Network-enabled Emergency Response (NEER) project, which highlighted interoperability barriers that today hinder emergency responders' ability to save lives and property. NCOIC undertook the project because response organizations - numbering more than 100,000 in the U.S., alone - have limited ability to share vital information in real time. The problem is further exacerbated when military and non-governmental organizations join the response to complex humanitarian disasters.
NEER's first finding was that every emergency response organization should be able to connect to a network based on Internet Protocol (IP). IP is the international common language of data communication. NCOIC's concept is that communicating "Everything over IP" (EoIP) is the essential first step toward achieving emergency responder interoperability.
Interoperability is not about building new networks or abandoning legacy radios and applications. EoIP is about communicating voice, video, data and text using the any-to-any paradigm of IP, and it would allow emergency organizations to use the devices and software applications that they own and operate today. Implementing EoIP would be a time and cost saving course of action, especially when compared to the alternative - buying identical communication devices for thousands of organizations.
NEER's second finding is that there is no nation-wide, map-defined electronic registry of U.S. emergency response organizations, their responsibilities, and their information routing structure.
The third finding is the absence of a system that confirms a response organization's identity and its authorization to send and receive various types of information.
In aggregate, NCOIC's recommendations for an organizational registry and rights management would allow emergency responders to write their own phone book in advance of the next disaster.
About the NCOIC
NCOIC is a resource for those who want to acquire network centric capability and for those who now build systems and supply network centric organizations. For more information, visit www.ncoic.org.
Terry Morgan is Vice-chairman of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) and Director of Network Centric Strategy for Cisco Systems' Global Government Solutions Group. He recently presented a keynote at the MicroTCA Summit, held in Chantilly, Virginia. For more information, visit www.microtcasummit.com.
