Before a wedge of lettuce, ear of corn or cut of steak makes it to your dinner plate, there is a long process that food goes through to ensure that it is safe to eat. The process to determine food safety is overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Department of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). How do these massive agencies collaborate and make sure that they can securely access info, even when it’s outside of their organizations servers and ecosystems? That’s where the Adobe Flash Platform comes in.
In order for these agencies to cross-collaborate on food supply safety, Eric Hoffman, technical director at Minnesota based Datastream Connexion, created CoreSHIELD. CoreSHIELD, with “Core” standing for “common organization registry environment,” is operated by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. CoreSHIELD began as a single portal that was built on Adobe ColdFusion back in 2004. Given its success as the underlying framework, CoreSHIELD now holds together dozens of customized portals (such as FoodSHIELD) that share resources under a common umbrella for federal agencies. As Hoffman has created more portals, he used Adobe ColdFusion Builder and Adobe Flash Builder to build them.
To date, CoreSHIELD lets 350,000 users across federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as laboratories and academia, work collaboratively toward improved national security, a more safeguarded U.S. food supply and better public health practices. In addition to using ColdFusion and Flash Builder, CoreSHIELD relied on multiple Adobe technologies like Adobe Flex and Adobe Connect. Additionally, Adobe RoboHelp was used for building help systems, Adobe Captivate helped create screen walkthroughs, Adobe Contribute came in handy for managing and updating web content, and Adobe Acrobat Professional helped ensure that critical research documents can be distributed to the broadest possible audience. With Adobe, CoreSHIELD has been able to enhance secure communication and collaboration across agencies via multiple platforms.
To learn more about how CoreSHIELD used Adobe technologies in order for local, state, and federal agencies to collaborate, read more here.
