Owen Ambur - DOI -
FWS
Nathan Baldwin - DISA
Mark Crawford – LMI
Jim Disbrow - DOE
Mike Douglass – SQSW (recording)
Ronnie Gerstein - GSA
Elaine Goheen - ED
Terry Gower - DLA
Dick Griffin – NPR/DOL
Michael Grimley – USN
Leo Gueriguian - EPA
Dan Jansen - NARA
Cliff Kottman - Open GIS
Mary Mitchell - GSA
Simon Nicholson - Sun
Bao Nguyen - USAF
Marion Royal - GSA
Jim Thorstad - USAF
Alan Kotok – DISA
John Paroda - Intercom
Tim Bolano - NIST
Johnny Young - GSA
Jan Wendler - GSA
Brand Niemann - EPA
Roy Morgan - NIST
Greg Portnoy - ISC
Terri Hobson – GSA
At 9:30 the chairs opened the meeting and invited any statements of specific interest from the approximately 23 attendees. Mr. Bolano referred to ongoing efforts on xml.gov. Ms. Gerstein encouraged the WG to take accessibility issues into account. Mr. Grimley identified another Navy center of XML interest. Dr. Kottman called attention to the geospatial markup language recommendation.
On October 11 FIRM and GSA will co-sponsor a symposium on GPEA & ASIS.
Recently
Mr. Ambur met with Lisa Carnahan (NIST) who hopes to have the first-generation
of xml.gov up within a couple of weeks.
At this stage it will serve a reference (versus collaborative) function.
While Ms. Carnahan is organizing structure, Mr. Bolano is gathering content and would be interested in hearing about any Federal XML efforts (with point-of-contact, short description, etc.) Mr. Ambur has requested that xml.gov be more broadly publicized to solicit information about these activities; the next-generation xml.gov should provide a mechanism for registering and publicizing XML activities in the government. He recommends that the portal handle these processes.
NCLIS, the U.S.
National Commission of Libraries and Information Science (at http://www.nclis.gov/) is conducting a
broad study resulting from the proposed elimination of the National Technical
Information Service (NTIS) by the Department of Commerce (see http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/planout.html). Mr. Ambur is participating on Panel 2
(information sharing) where he sees an important role for XML but sees the
present focus to be on bureaucratic issues whereas he would rather see
commitment to a standards-based approach.
Comments to this study are encouraged.
The
RosettaNet Conference will be October 11-13 in San Francisco. The last date to reserve conference-rate
rooms is September 25.
Dick Griffin provided an update on the Government Information Clearinghouse, a consortium of government and industry IT managers and developers bringing attention to specific interests and ”challenges”. The November meeting will discuss some of these interest areas; he encourages new members to attend. The Clearinghouse is “alive and well and moving forward …quietly”.
The
W3C has put out a call for participation in XML protocol work and are looking
at IBM’s SOAP submission as a baseline.
Heavy ebXML participation is expected.
The Digital Signatures XML specification is now out for comment. Mr. Crawford reported that the Schema WG has
acknowledged that it didn’t meet the original projections (September) for
issuing the next version of the specificiation.
Minutes
of the last meeting
Mr.
Royal referred the membership to the XML WG website for review.
Briefing
by GSA: “XML Pilot Activities at GSA”
Mr.
Young (GSA Creative and Emerging Technologies) briefed the membership on GSA’s
Web Forms site where each of the form elements is XML tagged. This effort, begun about four years ago, is
looking to the XML WG to help reconcile multiple XML vocabularies. Ms. Windler noted that GSA is increasingly
considering accessibility issues and is putting together final
requirements. Mr. Paroda (contractor to
GSA) commented that the strategy is to use XML through-and-through to support
using documents online.
This
first implementation of a GSA website using XML gives the ability to tag
specific information on a given form.
No one has been able to use it yet but “things are changing”. At COMDEX, GSA will introduce a
demonstration of XML-tag-driven voice synthesis. There are also implications for wireless applications.
Mr.
Young stated that there are now 500 documents online. They see hits of
40,000-50,000 per month. The original
vision is that one day there will be one universal website for government
forms. “The technology is there -- and
groups like this help.” GSA would like to
set the framework for that universal website using XML. They will be providing accessibility
features leveraging XML. A pilot is
underway with SmartCard and PKI. A
briefing package on the elements of need is being assembled with other
agencies. “We’re ready today to do
those things.” Ms. Wendler referred the
audience to www.fillform.gsa.gov.
Jonathan
Womer (OMB) was identified as responsible for the burden reduction
process. Mr. Royal has a call into Mr.
Collison (NPR) regarding the collection inventory and the collection
budget, which is now provided through GSA instead of OMB.
Mr.
Royal suggested working with GSA/C&ET to identify and address common
elements and DTDs and to establish a common vocabulary for forms in response to
GPEA. Mr. Young believes the forms
inventory could be easily acquired from each of the agencies.
Ms.
Wendler described how the successful e-grants program uses XML-tagged
forms. SmartCard technology allows a
user to securely fill-in the form on the web, to save the form as XML data, and
to sign it. Eventually the process will
reflect signed and encrypted status on the form itself and will support its
transport to remote applications.
Mr.
Royal’s office is developing a business model for the use of PKI on
SmartCards. “Digital signatures aren’t
‘interesting’ but bring much to the table for e-government.“ The real question is “How do agencies take
advantage of WebForms?”
Mr. Young replied that GSA’s Office of Smart Card Initiatives
has contracts that facilitate working with C&ET. Software is available for downloading from the WebForms
website. Mr. Disbrow mentioned that
Government websites cannot appear to endorse any product or compel the purchase
of a specific product. Mr. Royal
offered that the GSA ACES Contract (Access Certificates for
Electronic Services at http://ec.fed.gov/aces.htm)
provides access to three vendors
that could put certificates in the hands (i.e., browsers) of citizens at no
cost to them. A fee for each
transaction using the certificate would be charged to the agency.
Mr. Royal sees three ways to proceed with this agenda at GSA: the Office of SmartCard Initiatives, FTS/ACES, and C&ET
Mr.
Young ultimately hopes to see form fields populated automatically by SmartCard
input. However the C&ET staff
assigned to this project are few so they’re concentrating on ”giving you the
alternatives to achieve the best cost/benefit for any agency”.
The
forms on the website are used extensively by the public, the military,
veterans, contractors, job applicants, etc., all of whom might someday use
SmartCards to exercise the technology.
Mr. Disbrow asked
if the XML schema is going to be registered somewhere. Mr. Ambur replied that the XML WG is
considering this. He has been trying to
attract OMB's interest in focusing such a registry on the burden reduction
process with respect to public-use forms.
He has suggested that such a registry might be hosted at xml.gov but
that the support of OMB and NPR would be required. Meanwhile, DOD has established an XML registry but still seems to
be looking for a bureaucratic solution to divergent efforts, when a
standards-based *system* is what is really needed. The desired approach would not use bureaucratic force but would
provide a standards-based tool or service.
GPEA provides a model. It
requires agencies to give the public the opportunity to file information by
electronic means, but it does not require citizens to use such means. However, the ability to provide information
by electronic means will become the expectation and may drive funding
decisions. For example, systems whose
data elements are not registered in the system may be denied funding. Mr. Ambur referred to "the tragedy of
the commons," whereby benefits are focused but costs are distributed. He suggested that the case for a
standards-based approach can be made and, if such a case is well stated, the
CIO Council would surely entertain it."
Mr.
Crawford posed the question, “Where and when does one REALLY need a standard
vocabulary.” He went on to suggest that
it becomes a real issue in the B2B environment, where the need for common
vocabularies is important. The
government interacts with many communities.
At last count there are over 450 separate XML vocabulary
initiatives. But an organization can’t
necessarily create its own vocabulary.
Mr. Crawford summarized, “There is a need for a standard government
vocabulary only for government-unique functions and that’s where you’ll need a
repository/registry -- as a supplement to the commercial vocabularies.”
Mr.
Ambur offered that public use forms are a good focus for the government-unique
case.
Mr.
Crawford suggested that when the XForms specification is completed it may need
to be embraced with the transition. But
it’s still early in the development.
There is clearly a need to standardize on a standard vocabulary within
agencies. In intra-agency operations,
this will need to be coordinated where transactions are tied into an
application or database.
Mr.
Niemann discussed semantic challenges in the development and use of namespaces,
noting the difficulties of standardizing naming conventions, and envisioned the
search for a strategy to define core versus global elements. The XML WG could help with this. For example, FedStats (with NSF) is working
on standardization. “We should bring
such mark-up efforts to the table.”
Mr.
Douglass asked “Where in the government is XML ‘happening’?” Mr. Crawford suggested the best bet is to track
what’s happening in the private realm.
Briefing
on ebXML “The global standard for e-business”
Mr.
Nicholson, who is leading outreach efforts for ebXML, provided (with Mr. Kotok)
an overview and “incitement to participate” in the initiative.
ebXML
was described, in part, as a remedy for legacy limitations on e-business, e.g.,
isolation in large organizations, high-cost of entry and expense to maintain,
difficulty in exchanging messages outside industry boundaries, narrow
initiatives to translate EDI verbatim to XML, the challenge of consensus, and
the lack of a core infrastructure. But
the demand for an e-business infrastructure solution will be very, very large.
ebXML
is a worldwide project to standardize the exchange of e-business data using an
XML-based infrastructure with broad support from industry, OASIS, and
UN/CEFACT. The first meeting was in
November 1999.
“ebXML
enables anyone, anywhere to do business with anyone else over the Internet”,
engendering a global electronic market where companies can find each other and
do business using off-the-shelf purchased business applications.
ebXML
is focused on addressing the needs of small-to-medium-sized enterprises as well
as markets in transition, on facilitating global trade, on lowering the cost and
complexity of e-business, on complementing and extending current EC/EDI
mechanisms, on engaging new trading partners, and on converging current and
emerging XML efforts.
Participation
is free & open to anyone on an individual basis (versus corporate).
UN/CEFACT
has put other XML initiatives on hold until ebXML delivers.
The
framework uses BPM, UML, and XML.
Models are to be stored and registered globally. Trading partners register their particular
business process paths through the models.
Business messages are expressed in XML, business processes are defined
in UML and expressed in XML, the business services interface is expressed in
XML, and a transport/packaging and routing layer moves the XML data.
Demonstrations
of ebXML components have been growing in number with each succeeding
meeting. The next is in Tokyo in
November.
ebXML
will not build products and will stay horizontally focused.
“It’s
real and coming fast. Specifications
are now in the deliverable phase”.
ebXML is open and vendor-neutral.
The reference website is www.ebxml.org. Mr. Nicholson will send the presentation to
Mr. Royal.
In
response to the question of whether there might be an ebXML process model for
DOD to retain its unified acquisition topology, Mr. Crawford suggested there
may be similar models in industry where ebXML will be leveraged in that
way. In fact the bulk of the ebXML
business process effort remains undone.
Nothing
in ebXML should preclude DOD from creating a “super registry-and-repository”
(R&R) with “sub-R&Rs”. Perhaps
xml.gov could serve as that R&R for all government agencies -- if agencies
wanted that. The specification is very
flexible and could support both common and local (stand-alone) R&Rs. Mr. Nicholson stated that NATO has a similar
challenge and needs the registries to talk with each other.
With
regard to concern about translation of divergent XML vocabularies for
e-business, Mr. Crawford believes that when ebXML is fully defined the gateways
or translators will be built by industry.
How
does this compete with BizTalk? Mr.
Nicholson stated, “There will be several initiatives, some vendor-backed, of
course, but ebXML is UN-backed.” Mr.
Crawford added, “There are many obstacles to interoperability with XML (framework)
variants. ebXML does have the problem
of a lack of participation by Microsoft.
Efforts are being made to get some level of commitment from them. Ms. Brady emphasized that BizTalk can’t be
ignored. Meanwhile, there is a
continuing appeal by NIST for verticals not to proliferate local
standards.
Mr.
Crawford stressed that the ebXML framework goes way beyond commerce. There is some US Government involvement in
several aspects of ebXML via the Federal Commons, NIST, and DOD. Ms. Brady added that there is apparently no
competing framework equivalent in scale and scope.
Several
suggestions followed the presentation.
Mr.
Niemann and Mr Crawford stressed that the XML WG ought to get involved in the
ebXML effort, which needs greater participation especially from the
government.
Mr
Crawford suggested that the WG should ask the CIO Council to participate and
should review the ebXML specs as they are released.
Mr.
Ambur pointed to SBA as a good candidate agency to get involved.
Mr
Niemann suggested a whitepaper (exploring the impact of ebXML on government
e-commerce?) be developed.
Mr.
Royal suggested that the XML WG develop a liaison to each of the ebXML
functional groups.
Mr.
Ambur and Mr. Royal stated that they will work on a strategy with regard to
ebXML.
Next
meeting will be October 18.