XML Community of Practice

Meeting Notes

May 17, 2006

This meeting was hosted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) at CSC Maryland Technology Center (MTC) in Lanham, Maryland.

Attendees and teleconference participants introduced themselves and Owen Ambur made a few announcements. He mentioned the SOA for eGov Conference on May 23 & 24 and the Open Publish conference scheduled to be conducted in Baltimore on September 27 - 29. He noted that the agenda for the June 21 meeting of the xmlCoP had not been firmed up but that Patrice McDermott of the American Library Association (ALA) had offered to host the meeting for the purpose of focusing on Open Document Format (ODF), which was recently approved as an ISO standard.

Owen indicated he would like to see the ET.gov process used to propose ODF for inclusion in the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Technical Reference Model (TRM). If a presentation on ODF is scheduled, he also expressed the hope that Microsoft’s Office Open XML file formats could be considered as well – not in a confrontational or competitive manner but simply to foster understanding of the interoperability issues involved. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/faq.php & http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/itpro/fileoverview.mspx

Finally, Owen mentioned that the Department of the Navy’s (DON) XML working group had expressed interest in meeting jointly with the xmlCoP on June 14. Although Owen indicated that he personally has a scheduling conflict on that date, perhaps others may wish to participate in the DON’s meeting.

Owen then turned to the first item on the agenda, highlighting new submissions in the ET.gov process, along with XML-related submissions, and newly formed ET communities of practice (CoPs). With respect to the most recent submission, Stylus Studio, he noted that Data Direct has offered five free licenses to participants in the xmlCoP for the purpose of building a CoP around it. http://www.stylusstudio.com/pad/StylusStudio2006Professional.xml He also mentioned XSD for XML Best Practices (X4XBP) and KSA ML. http://xml.gov/et/x4xbp.xml & http://xml.gov/et/ksaml.xml

The first presentation was made by Glenda Hayes, who updated the group on developments related to the DoD metadata registry, including the XML gallery. She noted that .gov and .mil folks can self-register for access to the registry. NATO wants to use it and a MOU is being processed. Users can request a governance namespace for elements of interest to them. Holly Hyland asked how many namespaces have been established in the DoD registry thus far and how smaller communities are supported. Glenda indicated that more than 90 namespaces have been established thus far. Owen asked whether the namespaces have been mapped to the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) and/or whether any of the data elements have been harmonized with any of the Governmentwide eGov or lines of business. Glenda responded that has not occurred yet. However, the Defense Discovery Metadata Set (DDMS) is being used to facilitate discovery (and DDMS is used in the FEA Data Reference Model, DRM).

DoD is aiming to facilitate visibility, not just standards. In order to do so, the bar to registration has been lowered as far as possible. Otherwise the effect is to create black markets for data. Glenda also observed that data interoperability requires that the physical layer be addressed. Run-time capabilities have been added to the registry, using the ebXML specification and the freeBXML software to enable federation with other registries, but no partners have yet been identified to use such capabilities. Glenda noted that federation requires more than just conformance to the ebXML specification. So far, about 800 folks have subscribed to the DoD metadata working group. The registry contains about 130,000 components. Web Services will be an essential part of achieving DoD’s net centricity objectives. The U.S. Air Force has written use of the registry into its procurement documents, and David Allen added that new projects are being particularly targeted. Owen suggested that XML registry services should be included in the new IT Infrastructure Line of Business that OMB has initiated.

Glenda’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/dod/mdr.htm

Sol Safran briefed the group on IRS’s XML registry plans and activities. They are prototyping a registry, using the freebXML registry. However, he noted that it has no reporting capabilities. He also noted they’d like to integrate NIST’s Quality of Design (QOD) tool into the registry. Completion of the prototype has been slated for May 30. Sol emphasized that it is not an acquisition but that it will be tested in IRS’s infrastructure for up to a year and that additional requirements will be incorporated incrementally.

Sol’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/irs6/index.htm

Holly Hyland provided an update on the Education Community registry hosted by the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA). The primary stakeholders for the registry include 6,000 colleges and universities. When the registry was developed, the focus was on student aid but requests were made to broaden and open it up to include the entire higher education community. All of the schemas in the registry are based upon the same set of core components. Questions that have arisen include how best to promote smaller communities upward and what is the best size for a community. They want to work with external communities.

FSA did not use the freebXML registry but followed the ebXML 2.5 specification. They provided the software to two other agencies and put it out in the open source community. Like the USAF, they have also specified use of the registry in their procurement documents. They will be rebuilding all of their IT systems within the next two years and will mandate use of the registry and see what happens. They need enterprise analytical capabilities and their governance process extends outside of FSA, since the registry encompasses all of education. Currently, it takes two years to make changes in the education community but some other communities can make changes overnight.

Holly’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/ed/index.htm

Chris Traver briefed the group on the Global Justice Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) Clearinghouse. He noted that the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) had taken an overly inclusive approach. The clearinghouse provides information on a variety of IEPDs that have been submitted by individuals and organizations who have
implemented the GJXDM. Chris’ presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/doj3/iepd.htm and the clearinghouse itself is at http://it.ojp.gov/iepd/

Those who registered their presence at this meeting included:

David Allen, ASD(NII)/DCIO

Owen Ambur, Co-Chair, xmlCoP

Rex Cobb, DISA

Simon Frechette, NIST

Glenda Hayes, MITRE

Greg Haymans, MarkLogic

Holly Hyland, FSA

Serm Kulvartunyou, NIST

Glen Mazza, DoD (EDS)

Robert Mikula, MITRE

Doug Peterson, IRS

Sol Safran, IRS

Kenneth Sall, SAIC

Leonid Slavinsky, IRS

Chris Traver, DOJ

Allyson Ugarte, XBRL - Spain & US

Those who identified themselves as participating via teleconference were:

Jason Mazur, DataDirect

Farrukh Njami, Sun

Please convey any additions or corrections to Owen_Ambur@ios.doi.gov