IJIS wins Virtual USA contract from DHS Science and Technology Directorate

IJIS Institute has received a contract from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science & Technology (S&T) Directorate, First Responders Group (FRG) to support certain aspects of the Virtual USA (vUSA) programme.

Under the contract, IJIS Institute will provide support for incident management information sharing (IMIS) standards development, standards governance, and transition to operational use for the vUSA programme.

IJIS Institute will utilise Springboard platform to support the development, testing, and implementation of standards to support the vUSA programme while working with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the international geospatial standards development organisation, and with programme support from SRA International and Esri.

The IJIS Institute team will collaborate with the Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) on information sharing standards to support FRG’s goals and will also work with the National Information Sharing Consortium (NISC) to develop requirements for advancing First Responder information sharing needs.

The PM-ISE programme manage Kshemendra Paul said the PM-ISE aims to ensure the First Responders have access to critical incident management information advances responsible information sharing.

Steve Ambrosini, Executive Director of the IJIS Institute said, "It is gratifying to be part of DHS’s effort to develop high priority information sharing standards that will achieve national interoperability for emergency managers and First Responders nationwide."

The programme is a collaborative effort between S&T, NISC, other DHS components, and state and local emergency management agencies.

OGC president and CEO Mark Reichardt said, "The advancement of the IMIS standards and architectural recommendations through the Springboard platform will help improve sharing of critically important information for incident management."

In addition to enhance information sharing, the DHS-supported interoperable information sharing programme provides a virtual pipeline to allow data including the operational status of critical infrastructure or emergency vehicle locations, to be shared by different agency IT systems and operating platforms.