Andrew Owen Chosen to Lead SEARCH Integrated Justice Initiatives

Andrew Owen

SEARCH is pleased to announce that SEARCH team member Andrew Owen has been selected as the new Director of Information Sharing Programs, effective May 16, 2013.

In this role, Mr. Owen will be responsible for a multifaceted program of information technology services for the nation's justice, public safety, and homeland security community. He will manage programs in technical assistance, training, and conference and workshop development that support information sharing.

Mr. Owen has been with SEARCH for seven years, most recently serving as an Information Sharing Architecture Specialist. In his time at SEARCH, he has worked on multiple projects focused on integrated justice information systems planning and implementation, including the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM), the Global Reference Architecture (GRA), and the Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM®).

In 2011, he was appointed co-chair of the NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC), representing state, local, and tribal organizations. As co-chair, he has played a lead role in establishing a Unified Modeling Language profile for NIEM and in developing the NIEM 3.0 technical architecture.

Mr. Owen has extensive knowledge of open source software, agile development, and national standards, including the Global Information Sharing Toolkit (GIST) and NIEM. He has supported a number of information sharing efforts, including developing corrections-related reference Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPDs), the New York State in-state Rap Sheet IEPD, California Courts IEPDs,, and several incident reporting projects that leverage the FBI's Law Enforcement National Data Exchange (N-DEx) IEPD. He regularly serves as a presenter at information sharing events and conferences to discuss information sharing approaches and methodologies, and has authored technical publications on justice modeling exchange requirements, NIEM, Web Services, and related topics.

Speaking of Mr. Owen's promotion, SEARCH Executive Director Scott Came said, "Andrew was chosen for his thought leadership, customer focus, commitment to innovation, and in-depth understanding of the information sharing technologies we are implementing across the United States."

These implementation efforts include the three Member states of the Open Justice Broker Consortium—Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont—where important activities are underway to enable and streamline justice information sharing.

Added Mr. Came: "Andrew will be overseeing these implementation efforts, working with his team to evolve our implementation architecture, and continuing to bring this implementation experience to the national standards efforts—such as Global and NIEM—in which SEARCH participates."