Threat reduction information management: The TREND (formerly referred to as the US/NIS ExtraNet)

Defense programs still play a central role in protecting and defending US interests, while the government has also developed threat reduction programs to reduce dangers posed by the increasing specter of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Like other defense programs, threat reduction programs produce and manage a great deal of information. The programs involve interaction between collaborative partners, foreign and domestic, that act to prevent the spread of WMD. The unhindered flow of information between those involved in these projects is of great importance to the successes of these programs. For the nuclear threat reduction programs, a system with comprehensive access control was needed to support daily business processes, and to capture programmatic information, simplify it, and synthesize it -- the purpose and definition of information management in this case. Using these criteria, the Threat Reduction ExtraNet (TREND) system, formerly referred to as the US/NIS ExtraNet, was created and implemented by Los Alamos National Laboratory to meet the information management needs of threat reduction programs such as the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program. By supporting this nonproliferation program alone, the TREND system supports US nuclear nonproliferation objectives, and it has enabled new opportunities for enhanced program transparency at many different levels, both in the US and Newly Independent States (NIS) of the Former Soviet Union (FSU).