[February 27, 2002] The CECA XML Specification outlines a proposed XML schema architecture for representing CECA Property data structures. The UK Civil Estate Co-ordination Agreement (CECA) agreement "was issued under the Dear Accounting Officer letter DAO GEN 1/96 and set out the agreed procedures to be followed by OGC (formerly PACE) and departments in co-ordinating activity in the property market and in co-ordinating rationalisations of Civil Estate property. It also sets out the obligations placed on departments to provide OGC with the information necessary to successfully undertake these co-ordination functions, but responsibility for property decisions moved to the owning departments. OGC, in addition to the co-ordination and estate rationalisation functions, also held and maintained all Core Estate data on a central database. The Civil Estate is estate owned or leased by a government department (including non-Ministerial departments; and Crown NDBP's). Property is usually held in the name of the Secretary of State for the Environment, but may be held in the name of another Government Minister, or in the name of a Government Agency. The Agreement extends to all Civil estate property in Great Britain with the exception of the NHS Estate, the Prison Estate, the Foreign Office Overseas Estate and the Defence Estate..."
In support of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Electronic Property Information Mapping System (e-PIMS), the UK government agency has produced a version 2.1 draft of the CECA Property Data Structures specification which defines the data required to be submitted by Central Civil Government departments to the OGC about their Civil Estate property occupations. The goal of the UML/XML specification, which covers requirements of the Civil Estate Co-ordination Agreement (CECA), is to support the transfer and interoperability of e-PIMS data based on e-Gif standards. It outlines a proposed XML schema architecture for representing CECA Property data structures. This architecture has been developed with modular structure and has two clearly defined parts. The actual data structures referred to as the architecture and a set of schemas to be used to transfer the data, referred to as messaging schemas." This initiative is being developed "in line with the government's own e-Gif standards, but is essentially designed for use within the public sector, to facilitate the improvement in quality and accuracy of Civil Estate data. XML is being used extensively within the e-Government initiative to facilitate communication, with this in mind CECA is utilising XML as the key data format for bulk data transfer."
UK e-PIMS: "The UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has developed an Electronic Property Information Mapping System (e-PIMS) for the government's civil property occupations... e-PIMS displays the precise location and outline of department's properties, holdings and occupations on computerised maps and will allow users to access and amend their own core property details on-line... It offers a sophisticated searching facility of all civil property occupations and displays detailed information in textual form. The system enables users to locate Individual properties on the electronic map and interrogate e-PIMS, for example to identify available vacant space. The technology allows the parameters of each search to be tailored to meet the individual needs of the user and provides digitised pictures of occupations..." [main e-PIMS web site]
"e-PIMS aims to provide government departments with access to a wide range of property and land use information, overlaid on electronic maps. It is not feasible or desirable to store and manage this data within e-PIMS itself. Instead, it is envisaged that in time there will be links to other databases and graphical information systems (e.g. other property gazetteers, land terriers, internal departmental systems, land use systems etc)... To do this, it is crucial that all such systems support standard interfaces and linkages. e-PIMS will support industry standards -- BS 7666, Digital National Framework (DNF) and the Government-wide e-GIF (Electronic Government Interoperability Framework) -- for linkages to other relevant databases, geographical systems and departmental systems. Pioneering e-GIF and XML e-PIMS is the first intra-Government e-business initiative to submit a pioneering standard within e-GIF, using the industrywide standard for e-business, XML (Extensible Markup Language). Use of these standards will enable cost-effective linkages with land and property systems of other organisations, and ensure quality and consistency of information across government..." [from the e-PIMS brochure]
The CECA XML Specification will "facilitate the transfer of CORE CECA data between the database managed by OGC and other Estate Management databases managed by individual departments... This XML initiative is directed toward the support of the Core element of the CECA agreement and the implementation of linkages between government departments for the sharing of Civil Estate data. Core data is defined as specific information about individual properties (e.g., address, number of floors etc) which departments are required to provide to OGC..."
Address schema for CECA v2.1: "Currently in the CECAAddressStructure schema, the bs7666 schema is being referenced as follows: <xsd:schema targetNamespace="http://www.property.gov.uk" xmlns="http://www.property.gov.uk" xmlns:bs7666="http://www.property.gov.uk/schemas/bs7666/BS7666Schema.xsd xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified" version="2.0" id="CECAAddressStructure"> <xsd:import namespace="http://www.property.gov.uk/schemas/bs7666/BS7666Schema.xsd" schemaLocation=" http://www.property.gov.uk/schemas/bs7666/BS7666Schema.xsd "/>. This reference is based on a draft version of the BS7666 schemas which has not yet been published to a central schema repository. A version of the schema has been derived from the document UK Online - Information Architecture - BS7666 Address and Geographic Location Structures Fragment version 0.1c and dated 17th July 2001. This version has been published to a temporary repository at http://www.property.gov.uk/schemas/bs7666/BS7666Schema.xsd until the schema has passed through RFC and is made available through Govtalk...
References:
- CECA specification page
- "UK Online -- Information Architecture -- CECA Property Data Structures Fragment. [Towards e-government]." UK Office of Government Commerce. Document Type: Specification. Draft Version: 2.1. 155 pages. Also in Word/.DOC format. [cache]
- Schema for British Standard BS7666 address types. [This version has been published to a temporary repository at http://www.property.gov.uk/schemas/bs7666/BS7666Schema.xsd]
- Messaging Schema. "XML Messaging Schema for Bulk Civil Estate data transfer. This schema provides the structure for the main message used in Bulk Update data transfer between goevrnemnt departmental estate management systems. This allows the transmission of a number of CECA messages."
- Example "A test message utilising the CECA envelope and a mix of CECA messages of all CECA data types." [source]
- UK Electronic Property Information System (e-PIMS)
- "e-PIMS: Central Civil Government's Electronic Property Information Mapping System." Government brochure. August 24, 2001.
- e-GIF standards
- UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC)
- "e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF)" - Main reference page.
