Single Information Environment

Discover the importance of a Single Information Environment (SInfoE), its benefits, best practices, and Nexor’s approach to helping you adopt the SInfoE.

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The MOD Strategic Concept of a Single Information Environment (SInfoE) enables friction-free access to data, connecting sensors, systems and platforms within and between land, sea, air, space and cyber, via decision-makers at the relevant levels of command in real-time enabling decisions to be made from data gathered from across the defence landscape.

What is a Single Information Environment?

The Single Information Environment is an architecture, framework and specification for technical components that enables information from multiple dissimilar applications, systems and platforms to be located, accessed and used as though in a single environment.

This approach enables true multi-domain integration of information systems.

Within the Single Information Environment, a user, anywhere in the Defence Enterprise can identify and access the data required, from any other part of the enterprise (subject to access permissions and classification).

The SInfoE aims to allow all data consumers to access that data when and where required. As such, the users range from front-line operators engaged in high-intensity operations through all staff functions to head office activities in peacetime.

The SInfoE architecture encompasses the data models, protocols, infrastructure, and services required for essential Defence functions such as command and control, communications, ICT, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyberspace warfare, and logistics. It also includes the people and processes that deliver and sustain these functions.

The architecture is supported by a reference implementation that has been tried and tested via the Ministry of Defence MDIS programme and Project Archeron.

Although the work to date has focussed on achieving a Single Information Environment for Defence, the approach can be as effective when applied to other organisations with a large disparate data landscape

Why is SInfoE Important?

For decades, the MoD has had a goal of achieving a Secure Information Environment facilitating improved and faster decision-making at every level through the discoverability and accessibility of data from a disparate set of systems.

The Single Information Environment will be a key enabler in creating a data-centric force in accordance with the Data Strategy for Defence’s statement that:

“Data will be the horizontal enabler that will optimise operational and business outcomes, informing better, faster decision-making and command and control, nationally and internationally, across all five domains and with our partners across government, allies and industry.”

The Single Information Environment approach addresses five main challenges to effective data sharing currently faced by Defence:

A cost-effective approach to the integration of hundreds/thousands of sensors, systems and platforms - The N-squared problem

Discovery of data across those sensors, systems and platforms

Locating and discovery of systems etc when they come online in dynamic environments with intermitted comms

The ability to work in communication environments with varying quality and coverage, often disconnected.

The ability for communication and data access to be done securely

SInfoE Best Practice

Previous attempts at integration of multiple systems have focussed on harmonising data and the systems that provide it. This has led to a mindset in which integration will be made between individual systems. This approach, however, does not scale beyond a few tightly integrated systems (the so-called N-squared problem) and fails to recognise that the problem is multi-faceted.

A solution architecture needs to cover locating services in a dynamic environment where new services come online as operations progress, data interoperability between dissimilar systems, operation over networks with dynamically varying performance characteristics and multi-domain security operation.

Nexor worked with Dstl and other industry partners to break this problem down into:

An architecture for the SInfoE, encompassing the services that would be needed;
The components that provide these services;
How these services would communicate securely;
How the effects of poor and unreliable networks could be mitigated and
How to route messages between networks that are not directly connected.

This resulted in a conceptual framework for the SInfoE and a specification for a common supporting protocol.

The conceptual framework was then tested in a set of experiments, with ever-increasing ambition, culminating in Project Acheron where data from various types of sensors, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) was collected and made available to situational awareness tools.

Nexor’s Approach to a Single Information Environment

At first sight, the SInfoE approach can seem daunting, with new terminology and concepts. Our experience of projects such as MDIS, working with many suppliers, has shown this challenge can be easily overcome in a workshop where the concepts are discussed, progressing quickly to a discussion about how the SInfoE will provide benefits to a specific situation, leading to a high-level vision of what is to be achieved.

From this point, SInfoE projects must be approached in an agile manner to avoid integration and adoption roadblocks. This was core to how Nexor approached being the primary developer of the Dstl-owned SInfoE Reference Implementation and how we led the development of enhancement and the deployment of SInfoE for MDIS.

Nexor’s approach to the SInfoE is to enable our customers to rapidly adopt the software and approaches developed for the Dstl-owned SInfoE Reference Implementation. The specification and software are free to MOD programmes, reducing the cost of procuring expensive proprietary software or applications.

This experience and expertise mean Nexor are uniquely placed to help MOD customers and industry partners on your SInfoE journey, whether you want to explore how the SInfoE framework can be applied to your business problem, deploy an SInfoE for a project or programme or SInfoE-enable an application or system.

What are the Benefits of SInfoE?

Within the MDIS programme, it was demonstrated how the SInfoE could be rapidly deployed connecting systems from multiple suppliers across several domains, allowing information to be shared thereby improving the overall effectiveness and efficiency of Defence operations and decision-making.

The SInfoE approach is agile, enabling new systems to be rapidly connected, via open interfaces, reducing system integration costs that have previously taken months or years. The SInfoE approach uses common data schemas for common services, which simplifies the task of data integration ensuring the semantics of shared data is understood by communication parties. The schema approach also allows for the expansion of the schema model to adopt previously untried services.

The architecture and reference implementation are Dstl-owned IP and available for MOD customers and suppliers to use on defence programmes, avoiding previous pitfalls of vendor-lockin, and reducing software procurement costs.

Discover how Nexor can help improve the speed and effectiveness of your integration into the MOD Single Information Environment.

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SInfoE FAQs

The SInfoE is designed to overcome the challenges of locating services in a dynamic environment where new services come online as operations progress, data interoperability between dislike systems, operation over networks with dynamically varying performance characteristics and muli-domain security operation.

By adopting the SInfoE framework you will be enabling your systems to participate in wider MOD projects that are using the SInfoE, such as MDIS and Archeron.

The SInfoE is designed to use Zero Trust security principles and can adopt a Data Centric Security model. Controlled interfaces are designed to address the challenges of moving data between security domains.

The SInfoE is designed to meet the challenges of a defence environment, link multiple dislike systems, across domains over unreliable networks.

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