Intelligence Community Identifier

Intelligence Community Identifier

Chief Information Officer

IC Technical Specifications

Intelligence Community Identifier

Overview

Intelligence Community Identifier is defined in two encoding specifications, the TXT and XML encodings. The Text Data Encoding Specification for Intelligence Community Identifier (IC-ID.Text) defines detailed implementation guidance for textual identifiers to be used with a variety of text-based encodings. The XML Data Encoding Specification for Intelligence Community Identifier (IC-ID.XML), defines how to incorporate those identifiers into XML structures.

 

This specification is applicable to the Intelligence Community (IC) and information produced by, stored, or shared within the IC. This Data Encoding Specification (DES) may have relevance outside the scope of intelligence; however, prior to applying outside of this defined scope, the DES should be closely scrutinized and differences separately documented and assessed for applicability.

 

This specification applies to the IC, as defined by the National Security Act of 1947, as amended; and such other elements of any other department or agency as may be designated by the President, or designated jointly by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the head of the department or agency concerned, as an element of the IC. Joint and Coalition forces may use this specification but it is not required.

Compliance with this specification is measured against all aspects of the technical and documentary artifacts contained within the specification release package.

 

This specification is maintained by the IC Chief Information Officer via the Data Coordination Activity (DCA) and Common Metadata Standards Tiger Team (CMSTT)

 

Technical Specification Downloads

 

Latest Approved Public Release:

 

Mission Requirements

 

Information sharing within the national intelligence enterprise will increasingly rely on unique identifiers in shared intelligence. A structured, verifiable representation of unique identifiers to the intelligence data is required in order for the enterprise to become inherently "smarter" about the information flowing in and around it. Such a representation, when implemented with other data formats, improved user interfaces, and data processing utilities, can provide part of a larger, robust information assurance infrastructure capable of automating some of the management and exchange decisions today being performed by human beings.

 

“Intelligent” identifiers (embedded names, dates, organizations) are fragile. - Reassignments, recalls, and reorganizations make these kind of identifiers obsolete or meaningless over time. Lack of a globally unique identifier makes certain technical challenges harder, such as search, access control, duplicate detection, citations, folder references, etc. IC-ID alleviates these problems with an identifier that can be guaranteed globally unique and can be used into the indefinite future.