One World Information System is a concept of having an engineered, global, Information System unifying and extending the functionality of the Internet, the Web, the Semantic Web, organizational intranets, small-group networks and individual workstations.  This information system would provide the secure capabilities to all its users, i.e., to everyone, that enables them to be fully aware, informed, and involved in all those situations that are directly and indirectly relevant to them and require their participation.

The non-profit educational corporation, One World Information System (OWIS), was formed to provide full market support for this concept. To support the implementation of this concept, OWIS invented the "General Enterprise Management"™ (GEM™) methodology, management repository, and repository-based functional applications.

GEM is a universal "enterprise management solution" approach, based on engineering principles, providing a generalized full-enterprise management analysis procedure. Because of this generalized procedure, necessary for defining any system interface, GEM is intended as a common-use 80% solution, with local tailoring, extensions, and integrations providing the remaining capabilities.  GEM consists of a methodology, supported by various combinations of open-standard, open-source, and commercial management frameworks and tools/technologies, that can be tailored to fit your current and future IT environment. These technologies allow each GEM user, group, and organization to have a GEM model driven enterprise management (MDEM) repository that fits their needs, securely integrated with other GEM repositories as they see fit.

From the foundation of a GEM repository, continuously refined through the use of the methodology, GEM can integrate existing information systems, provide the foundation for GEM-based applications for new information processing requirements, or subsume existing information systems during their next redesign/redevelopment. Three examples of GEM use are:

1) to model and verify the adequacy of internal controls of Financial functions and the IT supporting them, for Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance by large corporations;

2) to provide integrated support for the US President's (or any Executive's) Management Agenda, and;

3) to build the enterprise architecture, using engineering principles, to serve as the primary data source, or security architecture, for role-based access control, role-based asset distribution, and risk and vulnerability management, down to the individual person level for a given situation, all supporting security management at the enterprise, inter-enterprise, and global level.

GEM supports the integrated flow of enterprise operations, supported by operationally refined human intelligence and organizational intelligence.

OWIS has packaged the portion of the GEM methodology that guides the development and maintenance of an Enterprise Architecture (EA). This basic enterprise architecture methodology (BEAM)™ provides a simple procedure to help guide activities in attaining and spreading the benefits of an engineered EA developed within the larger structure of an engineered enterprise management (EM) process. 

Training and other support on GEM and BEAM is available from One World Information System and other GEM and BEAM Service Providers, and VARS.

BEAM can be used to directly support realignment, reorganization, relocation, A76 (competitive sourcing) studies, corporate mergers and acquisitions, military task force rapid reorganization, first response and rapid response team formulation and activation, budget/performance integration, and any Executive initiative.  GEM, based on preceding BEAM efforts, can be used to directly support security architecture, security / vulnerability / risk management, knowledge management, expertise location / categorization / notification / collaboration / development / certification, enterprise workflow/application/information integration, and real-time situational awareness (e.g., business intelligence, environmental intelligence).

Consider the following generalizations about frameworks, methodologies, and tools/technologies to support them. 

·  Frameworks describe "what" information products are needed for some purpose, such as enterprise architecture (EA).

·  Methodologies, as a detailed procedural workflow, describe "how" to build and/or maintain information products matching one or more framework’s product specifications.

·  Tools/technologies (including physical and digital asset visibility tools, system and/or software modeling/documenting tools, and model repositories) are used to create, use, and maintain the framework information products, whether following an EA methodology or not. Most EA practitioners are literally begging tool vendors to give them a non-disruptive methodology (i.e., one that doesn't end up driving huge redundant workloads of surveys and such onto their organizations).   BEAM and GEM are designed to be non-disruptive of the organization’s ongoing operation, while allowing the organizations to follow a clear path in building, leveraging, and maintaining the knowledge present in their enterprises.  This knowledge includes both their IT (network/system/platform/software) physical architectures and enterprise (logical) architectures. 

A BEAM "virtual knowledge application" is an application that implements an extended version of the OpenGroup Object Metaschema, with the best technologies for this being ones that implement the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to define and maintain the application structure and content, Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) tools providing Directed Labeled Graph (DLG) capabilities to create and present the application structure and content, and Managed Object Facility (MOF) metadata repositories (based on SQL or RDF databases) to store, secure,  distribute, and manage (via the CIM/WBEM standard) the application structure (as UML, CWM, and SPEM models stored in XML format via the XMI standard) and content (as OWL knowledge-base instances).

This functional application metaschema would provide the structure and content of a virtual knowledgebase (i.e., functionally-relevant types of things and their inventories, relations between these thing types/items, the descriptive properties of these types of things their relationships, and the changes to the things, relations, and their properties).

GEM and its derivatives are framework and tool/technology agnostic, and can serve as an integrating environment for other less comprehensive methodologies.  Using a "map" analogy: GEM equates to a World Atlas, while other approaches equate to regional (e.g., function), local (e.g., procedure), and street (e.g., IT design) detail and landmark maps.

OWIS has selected and supports top-rated system integrators and management consulting firms for implementation of BEAM and GEM services and BEAM/GEM-based application development in the Washington DC Metro Area, Virginia, and Maryland, collectively providing a very rich set of Government Contracting Vehicles. These contracting vehicles enable BEAM and GEM services to be provided to US Federal, State, and Local government organizations, and to organizations of US NATO-Allied governments.

GEM has been fully developed over the last 22+ years, from concepts researched over the past 30+ years, all based on timeless principles of management. GEM provides integrated Enterprise "Management, Improvement, Engineering, and Security" (MIES™). It also directly supports and extends, through BEAM, a variety of approaches to Enterprise Architecture, such as the U.S. Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), Dept. of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) (formerly C4ISR), and the Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).

BEAM and GEM, respectively, provide a solid foundation for an adaptive and operational enterprise architecture and enterprise management, as well as system/software architecture, system/software development, and system/software management.

This GEM presentation (here in PDF) is focused on the use of GEM for achieving an Executive Manager's Agenda. A more detailed version is also available (here in PDF). An illustration of how GEM can support the U.S. President's Management Agenda (PMA) Human Capital Initiative is available here. The PMA supports the implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).

Consider participating in a meeting in your local area on BEAM and/or GEM through the MeetingUp.com service: