NIEF provides a trusted foundation for secure, scalable, and standards-based information sharing across public safety agencies and their partners. If your organization needs to share sensitive data across jurisdictional or organizational lines, NIEF can help you do it more effectively and more securely.
How NIEF Membership Works
NIEF’s membership model has evolved significantly since its early days.
Originally, from around 2008 to 2014, NIEF operated more like a traditional “club.” Agencies signed formal agreements with NIEF, and all members were treated as inherently trustworthy. But we found that this model wasn’t flexible or rigorous enough to meet the complex, real-world needs of public safety information sharing. We still maintain an archive of historical specifications, policies, and forms from NIEF’s early days. You can view this archive here, but please note that it is for historical purposes only, with most of the documents in the archive having been deprecated in favor of NIEF’s current operational approach.
Today, NIEF uses a much more agile and scalable approach. Membership is now defined by an organization’s presence in the NIEF Trustmark Binding Registry (TBR). Instead of naively assuming the inherent trustworthiness of each participant, organizations establish trust based on cryptographically verifiable trustmarks—digital attestations that confirm an organization meets specific security, privacy, or interoperability criteria.
“In NIEF, trust is earned and verified—not assumed.”
Each organization in the NIEF ecosystem decides for itself which partners to trust, based on the trustmarks those partners present. NIEF itself does not make trust decisions on anyone’s behalf. Our role is to provide the infrastructure and tools that help organizations manage trust effectively on their own terms.
Ways to Participate in NIEF
There are two primary ways that an organization can participate in NIEF:
1. Information Sharing Participant
Organizations can join NIEF to offer information sharing services that interoperate with and can be trusted by other NIEF participants.
- These services might include SAML or OpenID Connect Identity Providers (IDPs), which let your users access systems from other agencies.
- They may also include Relying Party (RP) services, which allow external users from partner agencies to securely access your systems and data.
This role is ideal for public safety agencies, vendors, and service providers who need to share or access public safety information as part of their operations.
2. Trustmark Provider
Organizations that perform audits or assessments—such as security firms, standards bodies, or internal compliance teams—can apply to become a NIEF-authorized Trustmark Provider.
Trustmark Providers issue verified trustmarks to Information Sharing Participants based on assessments, audits, or certifications. This role helps enforce quality, security, and policy compliance across the federation.
Cost and Pricing
There is no fee to join NIEF. However, participation is limited to:
- Public safety agencies and their information sharing partners
- Auditors and assessors that serve the public safety community
While NIEF does not charge membership or participation fees, participating entities may choose to charge each other for the services they provide:
- Information Sharing Participants may charge fees for access to their services or systems.
- Trustmark Providers may charge for audit and assessment services.
This open pricing model is intended to support the development of a healthy, sustainable information sharing ecosystem, where service providers are free to recover costs or generate revenue based on their mission and business model.
NIEF doesn’t charge fees. But participants may offer services—like identity federation, data sharing, or audits—for a fee, as appropriate to their role.
Ready to Join?
If your organization is interested in joining NIEF or learning more about the onboarding process, we’d love to hear from you.
Email us at help@nief.org to get started.