Minutes 11/17/04 Face to Face Meeting

[Elysa Jones <ejones@warningsystems.com>]

Dear EM-TC Members,

Please find the following minutes of the 11/17/04 EM-TC face to face 
meeting held in the Embassy room of the Wardman Marriott in Washington DC 
from 2-4:30pm.

1.  Roll Call.
Art Botterell
Gary Ham
Kwasi Speede
Rex Brooks
Michelle Raymond
Richard Vandame
Mary McRae
Chris Banton
Elysa Jones

2.  Discussion of the Interop Demo.  The demonstration earlier in the day 
at the XML 2004 conference included DMIS, IEM, Anteon, CapWIN and Warning 
Systems, Inc.  A presentation of the basic CAP message including slides 
from each participating company was given followed by a demonstration of 
the scenario.  Each participant explained how their product/device worked 
with the CAP.  OASIS will work to provide some press highlighting the 
presentation/demonstration.

3.  New EM-TC Charter.  The draft charter currently posted on the web site 
(and discussed in the previous conference call) was reviewed.  The group 
sees the draft charter as a clarification of the work identified in the 
original TC charter.  We agreed to accept the wording of the draft as is 
with the exception of:

-  The word "seamless" will be removed from the last sentence of the last 
paragraph in section "2."
-  The "International Health Consortium TC" will be added to the list of 
specified organizations with which liaison agreements will be pursued in 
section "4", second bullet under 1st Quarter 2005 deliverables.
-  The audience and users paragraph in section "5" will be 
changed.  Michelle will submit specific wording to which we agreed in 
principle.

Once these changes are made to the draft, it will be put on the web for a vote.

4.  EDXL.  Elysa read the transmittal letter from the EIC for the EDXL 
materials.  The basic question was whether the standardization of EDXL fit 
into the charter of the EM-TC and whether we were willing to take it on as 
a work product.  She also summarized the meeting held the prior day with 
Gordon Fullerton (DHS), David Alyward (ComCARE) and Matt Walton 
(EIC).  They impressed how important it was to move EDXL though the process 
of standardization as quickly as possible.  By doing early documentation 
and rapid protoyping, they are hoping to achieve several standards (6-8) 
through the process in the next calendar year.  They will work with us to 
best refine the hand-off so as to achieve this expediency.  DHS is willing 
to help facilitate the process by providing some funding for face-to-face 
meetings.   Elysa has been invited to attend a monthly meeting of this 
group to present the current status of the effort.  This will keep 
communications open and foster good coordination to keep things moving 
smoothly.  DHS will pay the travel expenses for the TC Chair to attend this 
meeting.  The next meeting will be held during the EDXL demonstration at 
the E.J. Krause Protecting Infrastructure Conference in Arlington, Virginia 
November 22nd and 23rd. There will be an Emergency Interoperability 
Pavilion where members can demonstrate their products.

There have been practitioners that have implemented EDXL over the past 
several months.  DMIS, for example has participated in these 
demonstrations.  Gary Ham summarized their experience to the TC.  E-Team 
and CapWIN have also been involved in some of these demonstrations but they 
were not represented in our meeting.

We agreed that EDXL did fit within the charter of the EM-TC.  We discussed 
the expectations of getting that many standards through the process in a 
calendar year.  With the current process, a 30 day comment period is 
required but that is expected to change to 60 days with the new TC 
process.  The logistics of completing 6-8 is quite ambitious.  However, if 
EDXL and others can be broken into small, manageable pieces and with good 
structure within the TC, we could possible achieve 4-6.  Our new draft 
charter actually lists one per quarter as our goal.

We discussed whether CAP releases would need to be coordinated with 
releases of other specifications.  We also discussed whether EDXL included 
more than one "standard".  The main problem identified was the taxonomy 
issue.  The EM-TC standards will touch several existing data 
dictionaries.  Our TC does not have any jurisdiction over these different 
disciplines.  These are some of the issues that need to be addressed.

A draft response letter to the EIC/DHS was sent to the TC members that were 
present at the face to face meeting.  This was iterated with good comments 
received and sent out 11/18/04.

5.  The meeting was adjourned at 4:30pm

Respectfully submitted,
Elysa Jones
Chair, EM-TC

Please review the minutes above and send me any corrections.  Also, stay 
tuned for posting of the revised EM-TC charter and vote.  The EDXL 
documentation was posted on the web site 11/11/04 and an invitation for 
comment was solicited.  To date there has been no discussion on the 
list.  Please review these documents and post any comments.  I am 
particularly interested to know if you will be interested in dedicating the 
time to serve on a subcommittee to first address some of the issues pointed 
out in the minutes and second start hammering out the specification.  It 
has not been decided how we would structure ourselves to address EDXL.  I 
first would like to know who is interested and can dedicate the time to 
focus on this effort.  Thanks, Elysa

PS - Remember I have the meeting with the EIC/DHS on Tuesday 11/23.  If 
there are any questions/ comments you would like me to bring forward, 
please get these to me ASAP.