From MIKE2 Methodology
| A Creation Guide exists that can be used to help complete this article. Contributors should reference this guide to help complete the article.
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Introduction
The Information Sharing Solution Offering enables the sharing of information across departmental, organisational and even national boundaries. It applies to both the private and public sectors: banks may be trying to protect themselves from fraud or money laundering, government agencies may share information to counter terrorism and deal with globalisation. The private and public sector may also share information to deal with joint issues.
Information that is shared includes that captured from traditional practices such as written forms to information produced by emerging technologies such as bioinformatics, credentialing systems and linguistic translation. Both historical and event-based information may be shared. Information Security and Governance rules are particularly important to balance privacy and rights of the individual.
Executive Summary
Organisations have a natural aversion to Information Sharing. As a competitive asset information is a strategic differentiator and therefore protecting this asset is vital. There are also many rules and regulations against some forms of information sharing that relate to protection of personal privacy, intellectual property or international politics.
But there are good reasons to share information and many types of information that can be shared. Whereas private sector competitors have used shared data from credit agencies or economic trends for decisioning for some time, they are now sharing more directly with competitors. Competitor sharing models are being driven by way to reduce risk, meet regulatory requirements and reduce total cost of ownership.
Governments typically have the most the gain from Information Sharing. As they are not operating in a competitive environment (at least in the corporate sense) and share problems that require cooperation (such as immigration or policing) information sharing is essential. Governments also have the most to lose. Their citizens will feel violated if information is improperly shared and sharing the wrong types of information is a significant security risk. Information sharing issues (either too much or too little) can quickly blow up into political disasters.
Too often the drivers for greater Information Sharing occur when something goes wrong: Inter-agency sharing leading into 9/11, child protection act violation that occurred across state boundaries, exposure of endemic corporate fraud. The Information Sharing Solution Offering proposes an approach to try and get ahead of these issues and provide a mechanism to be able to share information in an effective fashion.
Solution Offering Purpose
This is a Core Solution Offering. Core Solution Offerings bring together all assets in MIKE2.0 relevant to solving a specific business and technology problem. Many of these assets may already exist and as the suite is built out over time, assets can be progressively added to an Offering.
A Core Solution Offering contains all the elements required to define and deliver a go-to-market offering. It can use a combination of open, shared and private assets.
Solution Offering Relationship Overview
Composite Solution Offerings go across multiple Solution Groups
The MIKE2.0 Information Sharing Solution Offering describes how the Activities and Supporting Assets of the MIKE2.0 Methodology can be applied to provide an approach to sharing information across organisational boundaries. This solution brings together many aspects of the overall MIKE2.0 Methodology and also makes recommendations on the use of external assets.
MIKE2.0 Solutions provide a detailed and holistic way of addressing specific problems. MIKE2.0 Solutions can be mapped directly to the Phase and Activities of the MIKE2.0 Overall Implementation Guide, providing additional content to help understand the overall approach.
The MIKE2.0 Overall Implementation Guide explains the relationships between the Phases, Activities and Tasks of the overall methodology as well as how the Supporting Assets tie to the overall Methodology and MIKE2.0 Solutions.
Users of the MIKE2.0 Methodology should always start with the Overall Implementation Guide and the MIKE2.0 Usage Model as a starting point for projects.
Solution Offering Definition
This Solution Offering provides a strategy, set of implementation techniques and ongoing continuous improvement mechanisms for Information Sharing. As a Composite Solution Offering, it brings together multiple Core Solution Offerings from the MIKE2.0 Methodology. This solution offering can be used to:
- Define the business strategy for Information Sharing: goals, success factors and the scope of content.
- Define the technology strategy for Information Sharing: the systems, architectures and technology products.
- Define governance models: standards and policies for Information Sharing, especially related to security, ownership and privacy.
- Automatically model associative linkages between disconnected record sets using advanced technologies and techniques.
- Design and develop techniques for integrating federated content taxonomies. The taxonomies may follow the formal structures seen in many corporate taxonomies or more informal models. Taxonomies may be tightly or loosely integrated.
- Design and develop the sophisticated security model required for sharing content across the organisation, with partners and to the public
- Design and develop integrated knowledge repositories to support federated sharing of information.
- Provide techniques that makes it possible to share sensitive information by obfuscating some of the content.
- Perform detailed analytics on very large volumes of historical data and make predictions based on sophisticated modeling techniques.
Through this approach, organisations can share information that crosses departmental, organisational or even national boundaries.
Relationship to Solution Capabilities
The MIKE2.0 Solution Offering for Information Sharing is focused on largely on Information Development. It uses a number of activities from the Overall Implementation Guide to see a project through from strategy to implementation.
Relationship to Enterprise Views
This solution is primarily about enabling Information Development for how common information can be shared across different boundaries. Infrastructure Development capabilities are also important, particularly in relation to Information Security.
Mapping to the Information Governance Framework
The Information Governance Solution Offering is required across all Solution Offerings. For this offering it is particularly important that the governance models focus on standards, security and defining policies that allow groups to work together that are only loosely affiliated. The governance scope covers structured data and unstructured content.
Mapping to the SAFE Architecture Framework
Information Sharing may vary in terms of the capabilities required as part of the architecture. The solution definition may be very comprehensive and many (if not all) of the components from the SAFE Architecture will be required in the future-state if Information Sharing is to related to an overall Enterprise Information Management environment that goes across organisations to provide shared analytical information, documents and personal content. The most critical capabilities related to security, integration and modelling techniques to support standards. Interfaces are typically implemented through a Services Oriented Architecture and Enabling Technologies such as Common Messaging Models.
Mapping to the Overall Implementation Guide
Many activities are required across the Overall Implementation Guide to see the solution through from strategy to implementation.
Phase 1 - Business Assessment and Strategy Definition Blueprint
Many activities are required from this phase to define the overall Business Strategy. A description of how some of the key activities are applied is described below.
Enterprise Information Awareness
The Enterprise Information Management Awareness is an important activity to introduce key concepts so that the audience can have some level of common understanding. For Information Sharing, security is particularly important and a degree of level-setting is typically required in relation to the technology impacts of regulations that apply to sharing personal information, financial records and behavioral data.
Overall Business Strategy for Information Development
The Overall Business Strategy for Information Development is used to define the strategic information requirements for the information that will be shared. The types of information shared will depend on the business of the organisations involved, and an organisation may share different information with different business partners. Examples include:
- Financial: Enterprise performance reporting and analysis
- Emergency response: Asset deployment for crisis management
- Information security: Intrusion detection and incident response
- Law enforcement: Criminal investigation
- Counter-terrorism: Incident prevention
- Customer Management: Market trend analysis
Sources of information to be shared may include:
- Analytical information such as the results of data mining or historical trend analysis
- Information gathered for system interfaces that cross organisational boundaries. This is kept at a high level at this stage as opposed to the definition of individual data elements
- Common unstructured content such as documents or web content
It should be noted that information to be shared may only be a subset of the detailed data required to provide the result set. For example, only the aggregate view of detailed analytics may need to be shared but all information may be required to initially provide the results.
Future State Vision for Information Management
The Future State Vision for Information Management defines the strategic conceptual architecture for Information Sharing. As part of this activity best practices are introduced from a technology perspective as well as the resulting benefits to comparable organisations through illustrative examples. Common Information Guiding Principles and the conceptual architecture are defined within this activity, which then becomes the guiding framework for all solutions that follow.
Information Governance Organisation
An Initial Information Governance Organisation is an important part of Information Sharing as the additional layer of separate means that communications structures need to be firmly in places. This model accommodates the horizontal flow of information across the organisation and therefore crosses project and departmental boundaries
Phase 2 - Technology Assessment and Selection Blueprint
Many activities are required from this phase to define the overall Technology Strategy. A description of how some of the key activities are applied is described below.
Strategic Requirements for Technology Backplane Development
The core Information Sharing technologies reside along the Technology Backplane of Information Development and Infrastructure Development. This activity is used to define the capabilities that are needed for the strategic implementation of the programme. The initial strategic business requirements feed into this activity, as does the output from the conceptual architecture.
Strategic Non-Functional Requirements
In this activity, Strategic Non-Functional Requirements for Enterprise Information Management are captured at the strategic level. This activity defines requirements related to usability, performance and ability to scale to meet future business volume growth requirements. Security and performance is particularly complex when crossing organisational boundaries. Well-defined requirements are therefore needed to drive the technology
capabilities that will be defined.
Current-State Logical Architecture
The Current-State Logical Architecture assesses the current capabilities in the environment for Enterprise Sharing. It specifically looks to what technologies can be re-used and the scope of any content that should be migrated into the future environment. As part of this assessment organisations may need to study the current capabilities in place within to understand the compatibility of existing systems and interfaces.
Future-State Logical Architecture and Gap Analysis
The Future-State Logical Architecture and Gap Analysis builds on the conceptual architecture that is already defined and takes it to the level of detail required to make strategic technology decisions. Within this activity a gap analysis is also conducted between the current-state and future-state to determine which technologies can be re-used and the existing information assets to be migrated to the new environment.
Future-State Physical Architecture and Vendor Selection
Through defining the Future-State Physical Architecture and Vendor Selection, logical capabilities are mapped to specific product options. This mapping is then used to make technology decisions, often through an RFP-based selection process. The use of technologies that support open and common standards generally makes information sharing easier and better insulated from future changes.
Information Governance Policies
Information Governance Policies should be defined as part the Information Sharing strategy. Policy requirements should first be collected before being translated into a specific set of policies that can be applied across the organisation. These high-level polices are then used to drive lower-level standards.
Information Standards
Information Standards should be defined as part the Information Sharing Strategy. For Information Sharing, it is particularly important to defined common standards for Data Specification, Data Security and Data Integration.
Metadata Driven Architecture
Integrating shared data and content will also mean that metadata assets should be shared. For example, there may be a need to integrated 2 distinct corporate taxonomies to support sharing of assets.
Technology Blueprint Completion
In the Technology Blueprint Completion activity, the final steps are added to the Technology Blueprint and the overall set of deliverables is brought together. This deliverable shows how the solution will be implemented over time, as well as the final business case for implementation.
Phase 3 - Information Management Roadmap and Foundation Activities
Within Phase 3, the scope of the solution for a specific increment is defined and the overall content model begins to take shape.
Detailed Business Requirements
When developing the Detailed Business Requirements for Information Sharing, the focus is on the scope of information to be shared. Depending on the scope of work it may also define the business goals for collaboration. This activity builds off the strategic set of requirements, adds more detail and prioritises business requirements for the increment of work to be implemented.
Solution Architecture Definition
Information Sharing often requires a sophisticated architecture and it is important to define the overall Solution Architecture for the particular increment. For example, the approach for using common Services in a Services Oriented Architecture would be defined as part of this activity. The design for testing this will also need to be sophisticated and should also be incorporated into the Solution Architecture.
Prototype the Solution Architecture
Due to the solution complexity, Prototyping the Solution Architecture can be an effective mechanism for testing the conceptual design defined in the prior activity.
Phase 4 - Design Increment
For Information Sharing, a number of design activities are required which are described below.
Information Security Design
Information Security Design is one of the most critical activities for Information Sharing. This design activity will cover aspects that related how information is accessed, who can edit content and encryption requirements.
Infrastructure Management Process Design
The Infrastructure Management Process Design applies to the back-end environment that stores content. It also applies to the management processes and technology responsible for holding backup content from the collaboration environment and making it quickly available in the case of a recovery scenario.
Special considerations include:
- Performance across shared environments
- The need for specialised encryption algorithms
- Complex regulatory requirements that impact storage and security
- Sophisticated availability needs
Infrastructure process design across shared environments must always consider that the limitations of the interfacing environment.
Data Integration Logical Design
Data Integration Logical Design is applied when system interfaces are built between interfacing organisations. Within this activity, logical adapter interfaces are defined that may go through an application interface or the back-end of a system.
Data Integration Physical Design
Data Integration Physical Design is applied when system interfaces are built between interfacing organisations. Physical design of interfaces incorporate the technical details of how the interface will be developed as well as considerations such as performance and reliability.
Collaborative Framework Design
Many Information Sharing initiatives involve significant degrees of collaboration between organisations. Collaboration as part of a joint business process between organisations frequently features as part of Information Sharing solutions. Different agencies, for example, may collaboration on information results. These groups may also collaboratively develop joint information assets.
User Interface Design
The User Interface Design activity defines the front-end interface in which a user will interact with the collaborative system. If there is a collaborative aspect to the Information Sharing initiative, this activity will be required.
Phase 5 - Develop, Test & Deploy Increment
Through development, testing and deployment activities the solution the prototyped is hardened and implemented into production.
Technology Backplane Development
The Technology Backplane Development activity covers the development of integration and information management components for Collaboration, Knowledge Capture and Communities of Interest. This includes development of interfaces, web components and security technologies.
Testing Activities
Testing activities for an Information Sharing solution includes multiple cycles that are largely executed in a serial fashion. It typically involves Functional Testing, System Integration Testing, End-to-End Testing, Stress and Volume Testing, UAT and PVT.
Due to the complexities of testing when information is shared across organisations, testing will typically be a major focus on the initiative in terms of timescales and resources.
Mapping to Supporting Assets
Logical Architecture, Design and Development Best Practices
Product-Specific Implementation Techniques
Product Selection Criteria
Relationships to other Solution Offerings
Extending the Open Methodology through Solution Offerings
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