Community of Interest
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[edit] Acronym
COI
[edit] Definition/Description
COIs are an approach for developing the agreements necessary for meaningful information exchange, and doing so on a community-basis. A Community of Interest consists of collaborative groups of users who must have a shared vocabulary to exchange information in pursuit of their shared goals, interests, missions, or business processes. This group includes end users, program managers, application developers, subject matter experts, Combatant Command, Service and Agency representatives, and IT Portfolio representatives. COIs are organizing constructs created to assist in implementing net-centric information sharing. Their members are responsible for making information visible, accessible, understandable, and promoting trust – all of which contribute to the data interoperability necessary for effective information sharing.
[edit] Examples
HRM Community of Interest
The Human Resources Management (HRM) Community of Interest (COI) is a collaborative forum for the identification and resolution of issues and topics that impact HRM priorities and DoD Net-Centric goals.
The HRM COI has a number of objectives which include:
Support current and future Defense Business Systems Management Committee (DBSMC) priorities.
Focus on transformation opportunities.
Pursue the goals outlined in the DoD Net-Centric Data Strategy.
Address HRM issues that impact one or many DoD Mission Areas.
The Director, Information Management, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, serves as the Chair of the HRM COI.
Other COIs:
• Air Force Mobility and Transportation (AF Mobility)
• Blue Force Tracking (BFT)
• Command and Control Space Situational Awareness (C2-SSA)
• Global Force Management (GFM) Data Initiative (DI)
• Global Force Management – Air Force (GFM-AF)
• Joint Air and Missile Defense (JAMD)
• Meteorology-Oceanography (METOC)
• Network Operations (NETOPS)
• Time Sensitive Targeting (TST)
[edit] Specification
The DoD Net-Centric Data Strategy provides a middle management approach to data management through Communities of Interest (COI), the reuse of discovery and content metadata, and use of GIG Enterprise Services (GES). COIs will be responsible for the development of data sharing capabilities in developing Information Technology programs. COIs are encouraged to reuse metadata previously registered by other COIs. Commonly referred to as "data tagging," metadata is the technical link between data stored in the GIG and users searching for data.
COI members may come from any area of the Department of Defense. In specific cases, members of COIs may come from outside the DoD community (e.g., National Intelligence Community, allies, industry) to provide subject matter expertise. COI membership consists of DoD Component representatives, program managers, system owners, developers, data consumers, DoD Component leadership, portfolio managers, and others, all of whom can contribute in different ways to COI activities.
COIs are typically cross-DoD Component groups that come together to address a specific information sharing mission or challenge that the COI can solve by exposing and sharing data. COI solutions or agreements will typically involve programs, organizations, or data assets belonging to multiple DoD Components, thus, many entities within the Department of Defense have a role in the success of information sharing capabilities identified by COIs.
The focus for COIs is to gain semantic and structural agreement on shared information. For COIs to be effective, their scope—that is, the sphere of their information sharing agreements—should be as narrow as reasonable given their mission. Although the Department of Defense or a Military Department might be considered a collaborative group of users who have a shared mission, and thus a COI, achieving a shared vocabulary across the entire Department of Defense or even across a Military Department has proved to be very difficult to achieve due to the scope and magnitude of the information sharing problem space. COIs represent a mechanism for decomposing the Department of Defense’s information sharing problem space into manageable parts that can be addressed by those closest to the individual parts.
Key COI Attributes:
• Formed to meet a specific data sharing mission or fulfill a task
• Composed of stakeholders cooperating on behalf of various organizations, with emphasis on cross-Component activities
• Members committed to actively sharing information in relation to their mission and/or task objectives
• Recognize potential for authorized but unanticipated users and therefore, strive to make their data visible, accessible, and understandable to those inside and outside their community.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
DoD Chief Information Officer Memorandum “DoD Net-Centric Data Strategy,” May 9, 2003. Available at: [1]
DoD Directive "Data Sharing in a Net-Centric Department of Defense," April 23, 2007. Available at: [2]
Department of Defense Instruction 8320.2-G "Guidance for Implementing Net-Centric Data Sharing," April 3, 2006. Available at: [3]
Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness web page accessed on March 7, 2007 located at: [4]
Renner, Scott; MITRE Technical Report "COI Lessons Learned: Observations and Reccomendations," November 28, 2005. Available at: [5]
