Re: [emergency] FW: Inter-Governmental Information Sharing Standards: Meeting March 8

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Thanks Elysa,

I made a specific point of mentioning CAP in information sharing contexts 
such as a national level emergency at this week's XML Community of Practice 
(XMLCoP), meeting which was held at DOJ, Wednesday, this week. That 
occurred in the context of an expert panel at the end of the presentations 
moderated by Ken Gill at DOJ. This was the best meeting of the community of 
practice I have yet attended even though I attended via teleconference. It 
was focused on the theme of Interoperable Trust Networks. This rather 
inadvertently set the stage for a presentation I will be making to this 
group next month on a "Dervied XML Registry Prototype." I am hoping that we 
will have concluded our work on comparing CAP, EDXL and GJXDM by then. In 
that context, I spoke with the chief developer of GEFEG for modifiying 
their product EDIFIX to extract a UML Class Diagram out of the GJXDM with 
the specific purpose of making it easier to show comparisons of specific 
elements simpleTypes, complexTypes, etc between and amongst these 
specifications to non-technical managerial audiences. I will follow up with 
him on this opportunity since he is working with CAP right now, or at 
least, I hope he is. It took us a couple of weeks to connect.

BTW, the upshot of the XMLCoP meeting was that a group was formed to 
produce recommendations on how to approach this topic at the federal level, 
starting with a collaboratively written paper to be passed along to the 
Federal CIO Council for action. This just happens to complement the 
apparent formation of an informal industry-led and funded group to support 
the Chief Information Security Officers of the federal agencies and 
departments with their security tasks.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60401476

Sheer serendipity?  I doubt it. A lot of separate efforts are converging, 
for which I offer my post yesterday and Elysa's today. While mine was in 
relation to apparently unrelated organizations moving into standards areas 
for which their connections are at best somewhat dubious, that doesn't mean 
that I oppose those groups, since, in fact, I specifically endorse the 
Model Driven Architecture that OMG has developed.

http://www.omg.org/mda/

However, that doesn't mean that I think their excellence extends to areas 
beyond IT as a discipline. As most of you know, I usually take the 
peacemaker's role, to seek consensus but I am beginning to wonder if we 
might want to be just a tad more assertive so that we don't find ourselves 
in the position of having neglected to publicize our work sufficiently to 
relieve our brethren of onerous tasks already accomplished, or well 
underway. Witness the notion that we need not trouble ourselves with EDXL 
since IEEE 1512 has already solved these thorny little problems.

I will get my tongue out of my cheek now. I do think we need to seriously 
engage these other efforts in a sincere effort to avoid duplicating work or 
muddying up already roiled waters.

Ciao,
Rex

At 02:50 AM 2/18/2005, Elysa Jones wrote:
>EM-TC Members,  Please review the following info that appears to be 
>another opportunity for CAP.  Elysa
>
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Richard Mark Soley [mailto:soley@omg.org]
>>Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 12:09 PM
>>To: soley@omg.org
>>Subject: Inter-Governmental Information Sharing Standards: Meeting March 8
>>
>>Subject: Inter-Governmental Information Sharing Standards
>>
>>As many of you know, the Information Technology and Crisis Management
>>project chaired by President Martti Ahtisaari (http://www.itcm.org/), the
>>Object Management Group which I chair (http://www.omg.org/) and the US
>>Institute of Peace (http://www.usip.org/) have organized a series of events
>>to study the use of IT in crisis management and response, and how
>>information technology can better support the requirements of crisis
>>management and response.  Over the last two years of meetings, we have been
>>looking for a clear use of IT that made a difference in that world, and
>>could be applied (through recognition and publication of standards and best
>>practices) to other organizations.  Though crisis response was the initial
>>destination of this journey, I believe that we have identified a much
>>broader opportunity for IT standardization of best practice:
>>inter-governmental information sharing.
>>
>>A month ago, I had the great pleasure to visit the Organisation for Security
>>and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to see some of the work they have done to
>>automate the management of the organization.  Their IRMA (ERP and Document
>>Management systems) and IRMA Dashboard (easy command screen) are
>>revolutionizing the management of OSCE.  Through follow-up discussions with
>>OSCE and several other governmental and inter-governmental organizations
>>(and vendors which support them), we have identified a series of prospective
>>standards of best practices and interfaces that should be developed, based
>>on OSCE's work and the work of many other IT vendor and user organizations.
>>
>>The OSCE Secretary General, Ambassador Jan Kubis has graciously offered to
>>host an exploratory meeting on March 8, 2005 at their headquarters in
>>Vienna, Austria. You are cordially invited to join us for this meeting.  The
>>draft agenda is as follows:
>>
>>           1. Introduction of participants and their requirements & abilities
>>           2. Overview of the opportunity (OSCE)
>>           3. Overview of IT standardization, with details on the OMG
>>standardization process and history (OMG)
>>           4. Demonstration of OSCE's IRMA and IRMA Dashboard (OSCE)
>>           5. General discussion of the opportunity, road-map and likely
>>first standardization targets
>>           6. Schedule for plans to begin standardization
>>
>>As an immediate follow-up, the OMG will plan a standardization meeting on
>>this topic during its technical meeting week, April 11-15, 2005 in Athens,
>>Greece.  Since the next meeting of the Crisis Response Executive Advisory
>>Team (CREATE) is tentatively planned that same week (on Wednesday, April 13,
>>colocated with the OMG meeting), this will be a perfect venue to begin
>>specific standardization efforts in the arena of inter-governmental
>>information sharing.
>>
>>I hope that you will strongly consider joining me, Ambassador Kubis and
>>other interested governmental, non-governmental, inter-governmental and
>>vendor players at this initial meeting in Vienna.  I request that you RSVP
>>at your earliest convenience by filling out the registration page on the web
>>at http://www.omg.org/registration/OSCE-2005.htm or by electronic mail or
>>telephone to Kevin Loughry at +1-781-444 0404 or register@omg.org.
>>
>>Best regards,
>>
>>         -- Richard Soley
>
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster of 
>the OASIS TC), go to 
>http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/emergency/members/leave_workgroup.php.
>
>

Rex Brooks
President, CEO, Starbourne Communications Design
Executive Director, Humanmarkup.org, Inc.
1361-A Addison
Berkeley, CA 94702
510-849-2309