NIST Voting Program

Commission on Enhancing 

National Cybersecurity

ITL Language Evaluation Series 

ITL Focuses on the Role of 

Standards in Patient Safety

NIST Cloud Computing Program

Staff Accomplishments

Selected New Publications

Upcoming Technical 

Conferences

NIST Voting Program

NIST started its Voting Program in 2003, after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) 

of 2002 to, among other things, “establish minimum election administration standards for States 

and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections." Under 

HAVA, the NIST Voting Program has assisted the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) with the 

development of voluntary voting system guidelines (VVSG) that specify functional and testingrelated requirements for voting devices. In addition, we have authored a variety of guidance reports 

and worked to address voting system testing, transparency, and overall integrity. NIST also chairs 

the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), which has overall responsibility for 

recommending the guidelines to the EAC for adoption and use in their certification program, which 

tests voting devices against the guidelines.

Since 2003, NIST has worked to update existing VVSG and develop new versions. The NIST 

Voting Program has developed recommendations for voting-related security and for voting system 

usability and accessibility for voters with disabilities. We have also developed testing-related 

material to improve the uniformity of testing at voting system test labs and developed a project to 

establish a common data format (CDF) for election data. With NIST’s National Voluntary Laboratory 

Accreditation Program, we have performed assessments of voting system test labs and worked 

with the labs to improve overall testing. The CDF work has resulted in an open XML-based format 

for reporting detailed election results and, on election night on November 8, will be used by the 

State of Ohio to report election results to the media and public (the XML files will be available on 

Ohio’s Secretary of State website).

Currently, the voting program is beginning the development of a completely new version of the 

VVSG and is using a series of public working groups to provide input into the development process 

and to make recommendations for new requirements. The working groups consist of election 

officials, vendors, experts in various aspects of elections, and the general public. The goal is to 

develop a VVSG that has broad support across the entire elections community. See our NIST 

Voting Program website.

Credit: Shutterstock
Commission on Enhancing National 

Cybersecurity

The Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity

recently hosted its sixth public meeting at American 

University's Washington College of Law in Washington, 

D.C. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the 

challenges and opportunities for organizations and 

consumers in securing the digital economy. A series of four 

panels discussed international concerns, the current state 

of cybersecurity, growing and securing the digital economy, 

and innovation and technology in the government. Meeting 

discussions provided input to help the Commission form 

detailed recommendations to strengthen cybersecurity in 

both the public and private sectors. ITL provides support 

services to the Commission. 

ITL Language Evaluation Series 

The LoReHLT evaluation series, initiated in conjunction 

with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 

(DARPA) Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents 

(LORELEI) program, seeks to assist humanitarian and 

disaster relief personnel by providing human language 

technology (HLT) capability to assess emergent incidents 

in locations where language resources are limited. The 

focus is to develop techniques that will work across many 

languages, in particular applying universals learned from 

languages with abundant resources to those with less in 

order to provide accurate and rapid situation awareness in 

emergent incidents or disaster scenarios. ITL staff worked 

with DARPA and the Linguistic Data Consortium to design 

and implement an evaluation to assess such capability.

The first evaluation focused on basic tasks with the 

challenge being the language and developing language 

universals. The evaluation supported three tasks: (1) 

machine translation (MT – translate text documents from 

one language to another); (2) named entity recognition 

(NER – identify named mentions in those documents and 

classify the mentions into predefined types); and (3) 

situation frame (SF – identify frames representing 

emergent situations in those documents). While the 

incident language under test, Uyghur, remained unknown 

until the start of the evaluation, language training data for 

system development were provided in the two related 

languages of Turkish and Uzbek. The evaluation was 

conducted along three checkpoints, representing system 

development states after one day, one week, and one 

month. Participants had a fixed amount of time to process 

the test data at three checkpoints to assess the system 

performance over time, as more information in the incident 

language was made available. 

The evaluation took place during the summer of 2016 with 

participation from 8 teams from 16 organizations ranging 

from academic to industry. A follow-up workshop looked at 

evaluation results. Preliminary results across all three tasks 

indicate general performance improvement across the 

checkpoints. Researchers will perform additional analysis 

to understand challenges faced by the systems and to 

identify general or new universal features. 

ITL Focuses on the Role of Standards 

in Patient Safety

ITL recently hosted the Workshop on Role of Standards in 

Preventing and Mitigating Health IT Patient Safety Risks. 

ITL, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health 

Information Technology (ONC), and the Association for the 

Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) cosponsored the event. The workshop brought together more 

than 100 health IT stakeholders to share best practices and 

review the fundamentals of risk prevention and mitigation 

that apply to health IT. 

Health IT standards are part of the foundation needed to 

deliver high-quality, patient-centric care. The industry 

continues to gain a better understanding of the relationship 

between managing risk and providing quality care through 

the safe use of health IT. Workshop participants received 

updates on the latest standards development process 

related to risk prevention and mitigation, quality assurance, 

and safety-related usability, learned about recent findings 

from studies conducted on this subject, and defined the 

path forward for risk prevention and mitigation that apply to 

health IT. 

NIST Cloud Computing 

Program

The NIST Cloud Computing Program (NCCP) recently held 

its 9th Forum and Workshop. The theme of the event was 

“Cloud and the Interconnected World.” The event was 

attended by an international audience of about 200 

attendees and featured 35 speakers from government, 

industry, and standards development organizations. 

Speakers focused on the role of cloud computing in 

addressing the challenges of an interconnected world, and 

the necessary building blocks for the vision and standards 

that make an interconnected world possible. NIST Fellow 

Ron Ross presented a keynote address entitled “Security 

by Design,” which outlined the role that cloud computing 

can play in creating a more secure IT infrastructure for the 

U.S. government.

Staff Accomplishments 

Xiao Tang, a supervisory physical scientist in ITL’s 

Applied and Computational Mathematics Division, was 

elected a 2016 Fellow of the American Physical Society. 

Tang was recognized for outstanding contributions in 

optical technologies and systems, with application to 

quantum communications, spectrometry, and digital 

preservation. 

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Credit: Billington Cybersecurity
Selected New Publications

Certification Pathway for Downsampling 

1000 ppi Fingerprint Friction Ridge Imagery 

to 500 ppi

By John Libert, John Grantham, and Craig Watson

NIST Special Publication 500-306

August 2016

This document describes the procedure by which 

fingerprint image downsampling procedures will be 

evaluated with respect to conformance to the NIST 

guidance for sample rate reduction of 1000 ppi friction 

ridge images to 500 ppi as specified in NIST SP 500-289. 

The guidance is to be followed whenever 1000 ppi images 

are to be prepared for comparison to legacy 500 ppi 

fingerprint databases for submittal to the FBI's Next 

Generation identification system. The document provides 

instructions on how to run the protocol and submit results 

to NIST for evaluation.

Guide to Cyber Threat Information Sharing

By Chris Johnson, Lee Badger, David Waltermire, Julie 

Snyder, and Clem Skorupka

NIST Special Publication 800-150

September 2016

This publication provides guidelines for establishing and 

participating in cyber threat information sharing 

relationships. This guidance helps organizations establish 

information sharing goals, identify cyber threat information 

sources, scope information sharing activities, develop rules 

that control the publication and distribution of threat 

information, engage with existing sharing communities, 

and make effective use of threat information in support of 

the organization's overall cybersecurity practices.

Guideline for Using Cryptographic Standards in the 

Federal Government: Directives, Mandates and Policies

By Elaine Barker and William C. Barker

NIST Special Publication 800-175A

August 2016

This document is part of a series that provides guidance to 

the federal government for using cryptography and NIST’s 

cryptographic standards to protect sensitive, but 

unclassified digitized information during transmission and 

while in storage. It provides guidance on the determination 

of requirements for using cryptography. It includes a 

summary of laws and regulations concerning the protection 

of the federal government’s sensitive information, guidance 

regarding the conduct of risk assessments to determine 

what needs to be protected and how best to protect that 

information, and a discussion of the relevant securityrelated documents. The companion document SP 800-

175B discusses the cryptographic methods and services to 

be used.

Tattoo Recognition Technology – Challenge (Tatt-C) –

Outcomes and Recommendations

By Mei Ngan, George W. Quinn, and Patrick Grother

NISTIR 8078 Revision 1.0

September 2016

NIST conducted the Tattoo Recognition TechnologyChallenge (Tatt-C) as an initial research challenge that 

provided operational data (provided by the FBI) and use 

cases to engage the research community into advancing 

research and development into automated image-based 

tattoo technologies and to assess the state of the art to 

determine what methods are effective and viable for 

pertinent operational scenarios. Tatt-C builds upon earlier 

NIST efforts in biometric challenge problems which have 

helped promote development, advance the state of the art, 

and benchmark progress in different areas of biometrics. 

Advanced Identity Workshop on Applying Measurement 

Science in the Identity Ecosystem: Summary and Next 

Steps

By Michael E. Garcia and Paul A. Grassi

NISTIR 8103

September 2016

In January 2016, ITL hosted the Applying Measurement 

Science in the Identity Ecosystem Workshop to discuss the 

application of measurement science to digital identity 

management. This document summarizes the concepts 

and ideas presented at the workshop and serves as a 

platform to receive feedback on the major themes 

discussed at the event.

Government Data De-Identification Stakeholders Meeting 

June 20, 2016, Meeting Report

By Simson L. Garfinkel

NISTIR 8150

September 2016

The first Government Data De-Identification Stakeholder’s 

Meeting was held at NIST in June 2016. Eighty 

participants from 67 government agencies attended. 

Following the keynote, five panels discussed agency case 

studies, agency needs, available solutions, governance, 

and evaluation of de-identification techniques. In 

conclusion, attendees agreed on the need for collaboration 

and the sharing of techniques for the de-identification of 

government data.

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The Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) is a major research component of the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology (NIST). As a world-class measurement and testing laboratory encompassing a wide 

range of areas of computer science, mathematics, statistics, and systems engineering, our research program 

supports NIST’s mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement 

science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. ITL 

cybersecurity experts collaborate to develop cybersecurity standards, guidelines, and associated methods and 

techniques for federal agencies and industry. Our mathematicians and statisticians collaborate with 

measurement scientists across NIST to help ensure that NIST maintains and delivers the world’s leading 

measurement capability. ITL computer scientists and other research staff provide technical expertise and 

development that underpins national priorities such as cloud computing, the Smart Grid, homeland security, 

information technology for improved healthcare, and electronic voting. We invite you to learn more about 

how ITL is enabling the future of the nation’s measurement and standards infrastructure for information 

technology by visiting our website at http://www.itl.nist.gov.

ITL Editor: Elizabeth B. Lennon

National Institute of Standards and Technology

100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8900

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8900

Phone: (301) 975-2832

Fax: (301) 975-2378

Email: elizabeth.lennon@nist.gov

TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE

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ITL NEWSLETTER, GO TO

ITL HOMEPAGE

Upcoming Technical 

Conferences

NSCI Seminar: Roadmap for Building a Quantum Computer

Date: November 15, 2016

Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Sponsor: National Strategy Computing Initiative (NSCI) Committee

Cost: None

This talk will overview the basic strategy and roadmap for the 

quantum-AI project at Google, which has the goal of building a 

useful quantum computer.

NIST contact: Barry Schneider, barry.schneider@nist.gov

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rd International Conference on Research in Security 

Standardisation

Dates: December 5-6, 2016

Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Cost: $268 with catering services; $114 without catering services

The purpose of this conference is to discuss the many research 

problems deriving from studies of existing standards, the 

development of revisions to existing standards, and the 

exploration of completely new areas of standardisation. Indeed, 

many security standards bodies are only beginning to address the 

issue of transparency, so that the process of selecting security 

techniques for standardisation can be seen to be as scientific and 

unbiased as possible.

NIST contact: Lily Chen, lily.chen@nist.gov

NSCI Seminar: An Overview of High Performance Computing and 

Benchmark Changes for the Future

Date: December 6, 2016

Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Sponsor: National Strategy Computing Initiative (NSCI) Committee

Cost: None

This talk will examine how high performance computing has 

changed over the last ten years and look toward the future in 

terms of trends. These changes have had and will continue to 

have a major impact on our numerical scientific software. A new 

generation of software libraries and algorithms are needed for the 

effective and reliable use of (wide area) dynamic, distributed, and 

parallel environments.

NIST contact: Barry Schneider, barry.schneider@nist.gov

NSCI Seminar: New Technologies for Improved Computer 

Performance

Date: December 20, 2016

Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Sponsor: National Strategy Computing Initiative (NSCI) Committee

Cost: None

Tremendous progress has been made in building computer 

systems with higher performance over the last several decades. 

However, the need to build systems with even higher performance 

exists in a number of key strategic areas. We will review some of 

the progress that has been made in developing the materials and 

processes to enable performance increases at the device level.

NIST contact: Barry Schneider, barry.schneider@nist.gov

Disclaimer: Any mention of commercial products or reference to 

commercial organizations is for information only; it does not imply 

recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology nor does it imply that the products 

mentioned are necessarily the best available for the purpose.

The NIST campus at Gaithersburg, MD.

Credit: NIST

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