2. Overview of the DRM (3WXU)
This document presents the DRM, one of the five reference models of the FEA. The DRM is sponsored by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council. It is the FEA mechanism for identifying what data the federal government has and how that data can be shared in response to business/mission requirements. The DRM provides a frame of reference to: (3WXV)
- Facilitate COIs (which may be aligned with the Lines of Business (LoBs) delineated in the FEA Business Reference Model) in establishing common language. (3WXW)
- Enable needed conversations to reach credible cross-agency agreements around: governance, data architecture and an information sharing architecture. (3YN8)
The DRM provides guidance to enterprise architects and data architects for implementing repeatable processes to enable data sharing in accordance with federal government-wide agreements, including agreements encompassing state, local, tribal governments, as well as other public and private non-governmental institutions. The intent is to mature, advance and sustain these data agreements in an iterative manner. The DRM can provide value for agency data architecture initiatives by: (3WXX)
- Providing a means to consistently describe data architectures: The DRM’s approach to Data Description, Data Context, and Data Sharing enables data architecture initiatives to uniformly describe their data artifacts, resulting in increased opportunities for cross-agency and cross-COI data sharing. (3WXY)
- Bridging data architectures: The DRM provides a “Rosetta Stone” to facilitate communications between enterprise and data architects about data and data architecture in their efforts to support the business/mission needs of the COIs that they support. (3WXZ)
- Facilitating compliance with requirements for good data architectures: The DRM’s standardization areas provide a foundation for agency data architecture initiatives to put forth requirements that can result in increased compatibility between agency data architectures. (3YN9)
As a reference model, the DRM is presented as an abstract framework from which concrete implementations may be derived. The DRM’s abstract nature will enable agencies to use multiple implementation approaches, methodologies and technologies while remaining consistent with the foundational principles of the DRM. For example, the DRM abstract model can be implemented using different combinations of technical standards. As one example, the Exchange Package concept in the Data Sharing standardization area may be represented via different messaging standards (e.g. eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema [2}, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transaction set) in a concrete system architecture for purposes of information sharing. Other ways to implement DRM capabilities may be put forward by other agencies or stakeholders. By associating elements of concrete architectures with the DRM abstract model, those elements may therefore be associated with each other, which can help promote interoperability between cross-agency architectures/implementations. Thus the abstract nature of the DRM as a reference model provides tremendous implementation flexibility. (3YNA)
The DRM can accelerate enterprise and joint action around new opportunities afforded by standardized approaches for accomplishing goals such as the following: (3WY0)
- Enabling increased visibility and availability of data and data artifacts [3]; (3WY1)
- Fostering increased information sharing; (3WY2)
- Facilitating harmonization within and across COIs to form common data entities that support shared missions; (3WY3)
- Increasing the relevance and reuse of data and data artifacts via uniform categorization techniques; (3WY4)
The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: (3WY5)
- Target Audience and Stakeholders: Describes who will most benefit from reading this specification and from specific implementations of the DRM; (3WY6)
- DRM Implementation Framework: Presents the DRM guidance and rationale for the standardization areas, the purpose of each standardization area, and a brief usage example for each standardization area; (3WY7)
- DRM Abstract Model: Presents the DRM abstract model, which is described in greater detail in subsequent chapters; (3WY8)
- Security and Privacy: Discusses security and privacy considerations for the DRM; (3WY9)
[2] The word “schema” in this context refers to any of a number of XML-based schema languages. (3YHK)
[3] In this specification, the term “data” is often used alone to collectively mean data, data artifacts (e.g. documents, XML schemas, etc.) and data assets. At times, the term "data artifact" and/or "data asset" may be used separately, or together with "data", as appropriate for the intended meaning. The reader should consider the context of each reference. (3YHL)