OASIS e-GOVERNMENT  TECHNICAL COMMITTEE

Minutes of the second meeting of the e-Government TC:

Location:   Department of Justice, IMSS Conference Room, Washington DC.

Time: 	0900  EDT

Date:	12th March 03

Attendees in Baltimore										
	Name	Organisation	
1	Adrian Kent	Office of e-Envoy, UK - Notes	
2	Ashley Simon-Scott	Dept. of Navy  USA	
3	Bob Greeves	US Department of Justice	
4	Brand Niemann	Web-services.gov	
5	Dale Waldt	OASIS	
6	David Layton	US General Services Admin	
7	David Mcdonald	Microsoft	
8	David Webber		
9	Diane Lewis	US Department of Justice	
10	Doug Ward	VGS,Inc	
11	Eliot Christian	US geological survey	
12	James Rice	AmberPoint	
13	Jay DiSilvestri	Corel	
14	John Borras	Office of e-Envoy,  UK - CHAIR	
15	John G Ponting	Ministry of Defence, UK	
16	John Weiler	ICHnet.org, USA	
17	Jouko Salonen	Republica Finland	
18	Kathleen Kummer	SAP	
19	Marc Lemaitre		
21	Owen Ambur	Xml.gov	
22	Ranjeeth Thunga	OASIS HumanMarkup TC	
23	Susan Turnbull	GSA  USA	
24	Tim Benson	Abies Ltd.	
25	Usva Kuusiholma	Individual	

	Phone attendees		
26	Jerry Johnson	Texas	
27	Jim Rice	Amber Point	
28	John Ross	Security & Standards	
29	Michael Roytman	Vertex Inc, USA	
30	Micheal Kjeldgaard	Danish Ministry of Science	
31	Paul Spencer	Boynings Ltd	
32	Graham Beaver	HP	
33	Terry Bjornson	Booz Allen & Hamilton	
34	Tom Tuduc	Web Arches, USA	
Apologies from Ann Wrightson

OASIS e-Government Technical Committtee

1.	Welcome

Meeting started at 9 AM EDT.

Mr Hitch, CIO of the Department of Justice welcomed everyone to the meeting. The Department of Justice recognizes the importance of e-GOV to its future. There are 24 federal e-Gov projects and the DoJ has major involvement in 5 of them. The DoJ is also running a number of internal projects.

2.	Introductions and roll call

The list of attendees in Washington and on the phone is listed above. 34 members were in attendance; 51% of the membership was not present; this meant a quorum was not achieved.

3.	Minutes of last meeting and Actions arising 
The chair, John Borras has not received any objections to the charter for the TC, this is therefore adopted.  
John Borras reported some changes to the chairs of Sub-Committees.  John Borras will be chair of the best practices Sub-TC. David Layton will chair the ebXML/Web services Sub-TC.  Bill Cox will provide the liaison with OMG government Special Interest Group.

4.	Review of SC work and Charters

Services SC – Diane Lewis

•	Diane reported that the Sub TC had been brainstorming on the purpose, goals and deliverables.
•	Diane handed out a final draft charter to elicit feedback from the meeting in the afternoon. The aim is to come up with a common methodology for 6 services, which would include Health, Crime, Education and Travel. 
•	John Weiler suggested contacting the US government health program that is working on patient health records; in particular Dr Brian Kelly.  It would also be useful to look at the OMG reference models.
•	The question arose of how much detail the Sub TC should discuss. It was agreed that only a shallow set of commonality would be found internationally. It would then be appropriate for each country to localise the output for their national domain. The Sub TC should not get sucked into detail. This approach has been successful for e-voting standards. The UK has used the OASIS Election Markup Language as the basis for a local UK standard to be used in electronic voting.
•	Bob Greeves asked what approach would be appropriate to find out what work was been done in particular areas internationally; for example what were Interpol doing in the Criminal Justice arena. The meeting felt that using your contact lists and informal network was the only realistic approach.
•	Susan Turnbull informed the group of a conference on ”Open Source for National and local eGoverment Programs in the U.S and E.U”. The conference web site is www.egovos.org.
•	Eliot Christian ask the group how geospatial issues would be addressed by the Sub TC since it was cross cutting and not confined to a particular service. John Borras will propose, later in the meeting, the formation of an infrastructure sub-committee to cover such areas as Geospatial information and Statistics (case management would also be considered under infrastructure). John is meeting with UN/CEFACT to ensure work is not duplicated. OASIS is creating a registry of standards; NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) also has an on line standards registry (higher level of standards not an XML registry). Action: John Borras Check what standards are covered in OASIS and NIST registries.
•	Dr Nick Boozman was suggested as an expert to contact in the health arena. Also the Health Service Information Advisory Group (Michael Kerr ITAA)
•	John Ross suggested that generic requirements should be passed from the main TC to the sub-Committees for more detailed work.
•	Tim Benson asked if the aim was to look for common structures across the 6 areas of work of the Sub TC. John Borras said ideally yes, but emphasised the need to concentrate on immediate benefits. It was suggested that semantics is key to joining different areas of work.
•	The need to be able to identify health records belonging to the same person was suggested as being a key objective. More generally there is a requirement for a cross domain digital identity.
•	Micheal Kjeldgaard suggested the need pick out the easiest areas in health at an international level; this would lead to a list of high priority issues. John Weiler and John Borras agreed on the need to publish best practice studies.
•	Action: Diane Lewis and John Borras agreed to liaise on a case study from the health sector 

ebXML and Web Services SC – David Layton

•	David handed out a copy of a presentation on the work of the Sub TC. He stated that less than 30% of the group were from government; he wished to encourage more government involvement. John Bosak has agreed to serve as vice-chair.
•	The group discussed the scope of the group; the key message was the focus on an open non proprietary set of standards, this would focus on the XML paradigm and so would exclude EDI. It was pointed out that open structured information does not necessarily mean XML.
•	David Layton underlined that the need to understand and co-ordinate government requirements was the focus of the group. He also articulated the need to find out which technologies might be useful to government.
•	John Ross asked how much would the work of this group depends on the output of the services group. The dependency of the groups was acknowledged.
•	The group debated whether the Sub TC should be concerned with the payload of XML messages or not? It was agreed the payload would not be relevant.
•	David asserted that in addition to the 6 deliverables stated in the presentation, it would be useful to have a maturity forecast for the relevant standards along with the top 10 barriers to adopting technologies. This would help identify the business case for using a technology with a knowledge base of success story metrics; for example should the UK government adopt Web services?
•	The danger of focusing on technology rather than providing a solution for a project was voiced.
•	Diane Lewis is looking forward to guidance, awareness and pointers from the group.
•	John Ross emphasised the need of the group to focus on priorities and the ‘easy wins’. Micheal Kjeldgaard was also concerned about priorities and too large an agenda. David Layton assured them both that the group would prioritise. 
•	John Borras suggested trying the proposed work package out and modifying the work load in the light of experience. He reminded the group that the main TC has to be happy with the charter of any sub groups. More work will be done on the charter of the ebXML / Web services sub TC.
•	Micheal Kjeldgaard liked the wedding cake analogy applied to services: the standards needed for the health sector; their relations to ebXML and the needs of the health sector that can be met by ebXML.
•	John Weiler identified key outreach areas: XML TCs in OASIS; W3C; UN/CEFACT; reference to US Federal Enterprise Architecture committee.

Best Practice SC – John Borras

•	The focus of this group will be e-Government Technical Infrastructure; Approaches to service deliveries; XML repository; consultation methods; use of specific XML specifications; use of open source by government.  The output being best practice and learning points. The output will be published on the OASIS TC web site. 
•	John Weiler suggested ‘Best practice’ be referred to as ‘Leading practice’ and also that commercial implementations are easily implemented by Government. John agreed that if commercial practice is relevant then it should be adopted by Government. The SC would consider the change of name.
•	Eliot Christian asked for clarification that the TC was only applicable to open governments and open societies. A discussion ensued on whether open governments were democratic and vice-versa. John Borras said this aspect was outside the scope of the TC.
•	Kathleen Kummer said government organisation should not structure the delivery of government services. The citizen should not need to know the structure of government in order to get a service.
•	Ranjeeth Thunga was concerned about the overlap between the work of the TC and the efforts of the US in e-government. Diane Lewis reassured him of the good liaison between the two.
•	John Borras said the charter of the Best Practice Sub TC would be published for further comment.  Action: John Borras to publish Best Practice Sub TC charter to TC.
•	Micheal Kjeldgaard thought the charter was fine and will provide best practice from Denmark. Action: Micheal Kjeldgaard.  The Danish repository would provide a good study. Denmark also make use of ebXML core components as a basis their core components. 
•	Sarah Turnbull invited the group to share any mechanisms they knew for future proofing standards. 

Liaison with OMG – John Weiler

•	John Weiler has been talking with Bill Cox about the OMG’s model driven approach which is independent of technology. There is concern about the lack of re-use of commercial standards. OMG is not a technical committee it is a special interest group. In the area of modelling OMG do not consider government to be unique. There is a desire to look at an evolutionary lifecycle and identify the key elements necessary to model an enterprise. 
•	Tim Benson asked what was the extent of applicability of the Model Driven Architecture to interoperability and to generating the design of XML messages. John  Weiler said that UML is widely adopted across the US government but that experience has shown the limitations of the Model Driven Architecture. 
•	John Borras highlighted the need for a methodology that governments can use to produce XML message design. Action: John Borras to come back to the group with a suggestion for further work.
•	David Webber suggested that MDA may be more than you need to deliver government e-services and that Dynamic systems development methodology may be more applicable. OASIS has started work on a methodology. He asserted that people were too concerned with producing XML schemas and not on solving the problem, along with understanding the business process.
•	In the US all method frameworks are going to be merged into a component based architecture framework.

5.	Establish new SCs
Liaison Sub Committee
•	John Borras did not see the need for a liaison Sub Committee, but saw the need for liaison and co-ordination from sub committees. The group agreed. Eliot Christian thought that the liaison must be through the main TC, not through sub TCs, for efficiency reasons. The need to create a register for liaison was highlighted.
•	Action: John Borras to create a register of liaisons.

Language/Diplomacy  Sub Committee
•	Ranjeeth Thunga stated two issues: Diplomacy is another domain or service; the need for translation between cultures.
•	David Webber thought that technical solutions, for translation, already exist; for example the ebXML community is working on it. He thought the role of the Sub TC would be to produce a white paper on behaviours and factors.
•	Eliot Christian articulated the view that the group does not have the skill set to address the wide range of problems posed by translation, and should concentrate on liaison issues.
•	John Borras informed the group that any country in Europe may be required to present a service in any of 24 languages and this was a problem that needed a solution. 
•	David Webber saw 2 levels to the problem; low level translation; and the intractable problem of translating best practice to different cultures.
•	Micheal Kjeldgaard would like to see a roadmap produced for achieving multi-language services. He asked how to map XML from different countries. 
•	David Webber agreed to produce a paper on language problems, solutions and current activity, with input from Finland. Action : David Webber.  
•	Jouko Salonen stated that in his experience ebXML does not solve the Finnish translation problem.

Infrastructure  Sub Committee

•	John Borras felt that this Sub TC should concentrate on back office issues: e.g. security, Web services, workflow, methodology, document management.
•	John Weiler saw the need to create a context model in order not to duplicate any work.
•	Terry Bjornson saw the need to follow the work of the service Sub TC in order to find commonalities between services.
•	Eliot Christian volunteered to be chair of this Sub TC when he becomes a member under OASIS rules. Action: Eliot Christian to draft an initial charter Infrastructure Sub Committee.
•	John Borras asked if the group thought content management and metadata was an infrastructure issue. The group thought probably not.
•	Jay DiSilvestri thought metadata and taxonomies were related but different disciplines and that each merited their own space. 
•	Eliot Christian said the focus should be on the service and network information discovery not just metadata, and that sharing models also involves metadata.
•	David Webber saw alignment using taxonomies as important and that the metadata standard, Dublin Core, was not a ‘magic bullet’.
•	Action : Eliot Christian to consider whether metadata needs its own Sub TC.
•	Owen Ambur told the group that AIM has a work group for document and records management, with a first release in 2 weeks.
•	Micheal Kjeldgaard would be interested in taxonomies for different domains using core architecture. He mentioned the MIREG project in Europe that aims to produce a common taxonomy for European governments. He wondered how detailed a taxonomy was needed.

6.	Publicity

•	A flyer on the forthcoming secure e-Biz conference was handed out. OASIS will co-sponsor. Action : John Borras to find out whether Patrick Gannon will talk about this TC in a presentation at the e-Biz conference. Leadership awards will be presented at the conference. Action: TC members to send nominations for the leadership awards to John Weiler. 

7.	New OASIS web site content management system.

•	John Borras outlined the features of the new OASIS web site management system which includes content management; membership lists; online voting. This is due to go live this week. Susan Turnball asked if it included collaborative document review, and John Borras thought that it did.

8.	Issues register

•	The group discussed the current TC issues register.
•	Action: Adrian Kent to post updated register on OASIS TC website.

9.	Any Other Business
•	Requirement to use Open Office for TC documents: the group agreed on the pragmatic approach of publishing drafts in the authors format (HTML, pdf, word, spreadsheet) but also translating into an Open Office format for filing on the website.
•	Namespace management procedures for international namespaces – this would be added to the issues register.
•	John Weiler asked about the use of standardised templates. Action: John Borras to add to the issues register for further consideration.

10.	Dates and locations for future meetings

•	8t h May   		11am London  (NB change of date)
•	23rd July  		location to be decided.
•	29th October 	Washington, ICH (Interoperability Clearing House) will host.

Summary of Actions : 

No.	Action	By whom.	
1	Check what standards are covered in OASIS and NIST registries.	John Borras	
2	To liaise on a case study from the health sector 	Diane Lewis/John Borras	
3	To provide best practice from Denmark. 	Micheal Kjeldgaard	
4	To publish Best Practice Sub TC charter to TC.	John Borras	
5	To come back to the group with a suggestion for further work on methodology which governments can use to produce XML message designs.
	John Borras	
6	To create a register of liaisons.
	John Borras	
7	To produce a paper on language problems, solutions and current activity, with input from Finland. 
	David Webber	
8	To draft an initial charter for the Infrastructure Sub Committee.
	Eliot Christian	
9	To consider whether metadata needs its own Sub TC.
	Eliot Christian	
10	To find out whether Patrick Gannon will talk about this TC in a presentation at the forthcoming e-Biz conference.	John Borras	
11	To send nominations for the leadership awards, at the e-Biz conference, to John Weiler. 
	TC members	
12	To post updated register on OASIS TC website.
	Adrian Kent	
13	To add the use of standardised templates to the issues register for further consideration.
	John Borras