Cairo Corporation

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The Dream of a Common Language Extending the
Role of the Logical Data Model
DAMA-NCR Meeting January 10, 2006 Deborah L.
Brooks

• Cairo Corporation
• An Inc 500 Company

ISO90012000 CERTIFIED 8(a) ? SDB ? WOB ? GSA ?
GSA STARS
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Agenda

• The Beginning
• The Journey
• The Dream

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Background

• Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Program
• First focus of the Customs Border Protection
  (CBP) Modernization Initiative
• Supports CBPs priority mission by
• Assisting in targeting high-risk cargo
• Improving previous measures against the threat of
  terrorists and terrorist weapons
• Expediting legitimate trade

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The Beginning

• The ACE Logical Data Model (LDM)
• Representation of the information needs for
  cargo-related business operations
• Foundation for physical database design for ACE
  releases
• Contains
• 50 Subject Areas
• 925 Entities
• 10084 Attributes

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Impressive, but is it right?

• Desired LDM characteristics
• Complete
• Correct
• Consistent
• Integrity
• Aligned
• Integrated

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The Journey

• ACE LDM Validation Goals
• Confirmation of existing entities, attributes and
  relationships
• Identification of
• Missing entities, attributes and relationships
• Incorrect relationships
• Redundant entities, attributes and relationships
• Unused / irrelevant entities and attributes

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Horizontal Integration
ACE ConOps
ACE LDM
ACE BPA

• Notes
• ACE Concept of Operations (ConOps) contains
  high-level business process flows.
• ACE Business Process Architecture (BPA) is
  currently under development. The CBP
• Enterprise Business Process Architecture (EBPA)
  and ACE Release Business
• Processes (BPs) were used as a proxy for ACE
  BPA.

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Vertical Alignment Top Down
ACE LDM

• New Acronyms
• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Enterprise Conceptual Data Model (ECDM)

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Vertical Alignment Bottom Up
ACE LDM
ACE Release PDM

• New Acronyms
• Physical Data Model (PDM)

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Benefits

• Cross-validation of other architecture artifacts
  (ECDM, BPA)
• (Identification of process overlaps across ACE
  releases)
• Easy identification of implementation timeframe
  through color-coding of ACE LDM entities by ACE
  Release
• Positioned to support federal information-sharing
  initiatives such as the Federal Enterprise
  Architecture (FEA) Data Reference Model (DRM) at
  either a logical or physical level

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Information Sharing

• Extended the links to the ACE LDM for
• Information Sharing Stakeholders
• Mapped ACE LDM to external organizations
• Indicated if organization is a Consumer of data
  from ACE or Provider of data to ACE
• Standard Trade data interface

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International Trade Data Set Standard Data Set

• Collection, use and dissemination of trade and
  transport data
• Supports the international trade process and U.S.
  border regulations and enforcement
  responsibilities
• Contains 1060 standardized data elements
  representing the harmonization of 8900 agency
  data elements from 21 Participating Government
  Agencies

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International Trade Data Set Standard Data Set
Links

• Participating Government Agency Data Elements
• World Customs Organization Trade Data Model
• Parallel data harmonization effort
• Facilitates the exchange of information between
  government agencies that regulate international
  trade
• National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)
• NIEM 0.2 Pilot
• New International Trade domain

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Information Sharing
ACE LDM
ISSs

• New Acronyms
• Information Sharing Stakeholders (ISSs)
• International Trade Data Set (ITDS) Standard
  Data Set (SDS)
• Participating Government Agency (PGA) Data
  Elements (DEs)
• World Customs Organization (WCO)
• National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)

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Benefits

• Traceability of WCO and PGA synonyms to ACE LDM
  attributes to ACE Release PDM attributes
• Identification of all ACE information-sharing
  stakeholders, including those PGAs participating
  in ITDS, and the definition of Communities of
  Interest (COIs)

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Requirements
ACE LDM
ACE Require- ment
ACE Release PDM
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Benefits

• Traceability of requirements to ACE releases
• Confirm scope of release implementation for data
  (and process)

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Data Transition

• Associate source system data structure to target
  ACE Release data structure
• Use ACE LDM as common denominator

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Data Transition
ACE LDM
ACE Release PDM
Source System PDM
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Benefits

• Ensure transition of data to same logical concept
• Reduced complexity of mapping effort map each
  source system data structure once to ACE LDM
  regardless of how many ACE releases are involved
• Same principle applies for one-way data
  conversion or ongoing data exchange. Target data
  structure can be a PDM, LDM, COTS, Interface
  parameter, etc.

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Data Transition Data Quality
Business Rule
Quality Objective
Quality Assess- ment
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The Big Picture Realizing the Dream
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LDM Role Extension

• Uses the ACE LDM a a fulcrum to to support
• Information sharing
• Data Transition
• Requirements Traceability
• in addition to more traditional role of
  depicting business data requirements and driving
  physical database design
• ACE LDM moves from an architecture artifact to an
  active, integral role in the management of
  information in the CBP enterprise

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Technical Implementation

• Most links are documented in Telelogics System
  Architect (SA) Business Rules, Quality
  Objectives and Assessments are in MS Access
• Added new SA Definition Types
• Business Organization
• Validation Reference
• ConOps Scenario Step
• Business Process Definition
• Use Case
• EBPA Process
• ECDM Conceptual Entity
• PGA Alias

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Whats Next

• TBD, but could include
• NIEM Mapping for full ACE LDM content
• Additional taxonomies to support information
  sharing at a federal level
• Leverage ACE LDM for Data Governance activities
  such as definition of data stewards and owners,
  data security and privacy requirements, data
  retention requirements, etc.
• Limited only by our imagination.

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Questions?
Deborah L. Brooks Principal
Technologist Cairo Corporation Phone 703
667-4920 E-mail dbrooks_at_cairocorp.com