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How to Use This Document

Within the organizations that comprise the Terrorism-Related ISE (TR ISE) communities, the ICIF impacts the following types of individuals.

For each of these organizational roles, we provide a “roadmap” of recommended topics and pages to help individuals in those roles to quickly get familiar with the ICIF and understand how to leverage it to best accomplish broader organizational objectives

For Executives:

If you are an executive for an organization within the TR ISE communities, and your duties include obtaining and allocating strategic resources (money, people, authority, etc.) liaising with partner organizations, and promoting your organization’s mission to your partner organizations and within your partner communities, then we recommend that you take the following path through this document to gain a solid high-level foundation for what problems the ICIF is intended to solve, and how the ICIF solves those problems.

  1. Read the material on the information sharing and safeguarding challenge, to establish a firm understanding of the problem that the ICIF proposes to solve.
  2. Learn more about the ICIF, including the ICIF fundamentals and how it can benefit your organization.
  3. Read about how the ICIF relates to the TR ISE, and the principles that guided the design of the ICIF.

For CIOs and CTOs:

If you are a chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO) for an organization within the ISE communities, and your duties include delivering technical capabilities and defining appropriate technical policies (e.g., security, privacy, identity, trust, interoperability, etc.) in response to mission-specific requirements articulated by the other roles listed herein, then we recommend that you read the following sections of the document to establish a high-level foundational understanding of the ICIF plus a deeper technical grounding in how the ICIF works and how its “inner workings” relate to your organization at a technical and legal level.

  1. Read all of the material listed above for executives, to gain a high-level understanding of the “what and why” of the ICIF.
  2. Learn more about the Assertion-Based Architecture (ABA), including the ABA fundamentals, the specific capabilities that comprise the ABA, and how to leverage the ABA and its capabilities to solve the various technical aspects of the IS&S challenge.
  3. Read about the legal aspects of the ICIF, including the legal underpinnings of the ABA as well as intellectual property rights (IPR) that pertain to the use of the ICIF.
  4. Learn more about how the ABA leverages the Trustmark Framework (TMF) specification, tools, and other artifacts.

For Policy Leads:

If you play a policy leadership role for an organization within the ISE communities, and your duties include negotiating and executing information sharing agreements with partner organizations in response to your mission-specific requirements, then we recommend that you read the following sections of the document to establish a high-level foundational understanding of the ICIF plus a deeper grounding in how the ICIF works and how it can help you address the challenges that your organization faces with respect to policy and agreements.

  1. Read all of the material listed above for executives, to gain a high-level understanding of the “what and why” of the ICIF.
  2. Learn more about the Assertion-Based Architecture (ABA), including the ABA fundamentals, the specific ABA capabilities, and how to leverage the ABA and its capabilities to solve the various policy and legal agreement aspects of the IS&S challenge.
  3. Read about the legal aspects of the ICIF, including the legal underpinnings of the ABA as well as intellectual property rights (IPR) that pertain to the use of the ICIF.

For Operational Leads:

If you play an operational leadership role (e.g., mid-level operational supervisor, major case lead, disaster response coordinator, etc.) for an organization within the ISE communities, and your duties include commanding two or more operators (e.g., investigators, analysts, etc.) and maintaining situational awareness on behalf of your organization, then we recommend that you read the following sections of the document to gain a high-level understanding of what the ICIF is and how your organization can benefit from it.

  1. Read about the information sharing and safeguarding challenge, to better understand the problem that the ICIF proposes to solve.
  2. Learn more about the ICIF, including the ICIF fundamentals and how it can benefit your organization.

For Operators:

If you play a “boots on the ground” operational role (e.g., patrolman, federal agent, first responder, detective, joint task force member, intelligence analyst, criminal case researcher, Fusion Center watchstander, etc.) for an organization within the ISE communities, and your duties include carrying out the primary mission of your organization, then we suggest that you follow the above recommendations for Operational Leads to gain a high-level understanding of the ICIF and how your organization can benefit from it.

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