Exchange Network History

Year Event  
1998
  • Exchange Network First Conceived: State/EPA Information Management Workgroup (IMWG) was formed to work on information management issues of concern to both States and EPA.
 
1999
  • Environmental Data Standards Council (EDSC) Formed: This State/EPA partnership was developed to establish national data standards for commonly used sets of environmental information.
 
2000
  • Exchange Network Blueprint Released: This important document outlined the vision and goals of the Exchange Network, describing a partnership among EPA, States, Territories, and Tribes to collaboratively share environmental information using web services technology.
 
2001
  • Network Node Alpha Phase: Four States and EPA work collaboratively to develop the first demonstrated Node configurations and test interagency connectivity.
 
2002
  • Exchange Network Grant Program Established: EPA establishes an Exchange Network grants program to provide funding to States, Tribes, and Territories to assist them in developing a technical infrastructure to support the Exchange Network. In the initial year, $23.5 million worth of grants are awarded.
  • Network Node Beta Phase: Five additional States and EPA further refine the Node Specifications and develop additional demonstrated Node configurations.
  • Exchange Network Implementation Plan Finalized: This important follow-up to the Blueprint document defined an organization/management structure for the Exchange Network and identified the steps required to make the Exchange Network an ongoing entity.
  • Exchange Network Governance Formally Established: At the direction of the Implementation Plan, the Network Steering Board, Technical Resources Group (TRG), Operations, Technology, and Security (OTS), and Node and Flow Configuration Group (NFC) were chartered.
 
2003
  • Node 1.0 and Node 1.1 Functional Specifications Released: These important documents defined the design of the web services that were to be implemented by EPA and all States to enable sharing of environmental data consistently.
  • First Nodes Become Operational and Data Starts Flowing: Several pioneering States begin using their Nodes in a production environment. Initial data flows are for Facility and DMR data.
 
2004
  • First Data Publishing Dataflow Developed: The Pacific Northwest Water Quality eXchange was created to regionally share water quality data. This was the first example of multi-state data publishing on the Exchange Network.
 
2005  
2007  
2008  
2009
  • OpenNode2 released under open source license.
 
2010
  • EN-Node released under open source license.
 
2011  
2012  
2013  
2014  
2015