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

["Tom Merkle" <TMerkle@capwin.org>]

Art,
The only way (from my limited point of view) to leverage the other
standards is to compare them against each other. This will enable us to
identify areas of conflict and any gaps between the standards. I'm not
suggesting we make any determination of which definition is correct but
rather raising the flag of an issue between two or more standards for a
particular term. While the comparison work may be outside the realm of
scope for the EM TC, it is certainly within my responsibility as a
member of NIJ CommTech and CapWIN to ensure the various disciplines can
have data interoperability based on accepted standards. 
My findings will be shared with all interested parties so a dialogue may
begin to harmonize (if possible) any uncovered issues. As of this moment
no one has a good view of standards overlap or gaps. I'm sure there are
political and turf boundaries that WILL be crossed. My focus is for the
ultimate end user (first responder) and the well being of the public
that they serve.


Regards,
 
Tom Merkle
 
CapWIN:        www.capwin.org 
Phone:        (301) 614-3720
Cell Phone:   (240) 375-1966
Fax:          (301) 614-0581
e-mail:        tmerkle@capwin.org
 
CapWIN
6305 Ivy Lane Suite 300
Capital Office Park
Greenbelt, MD 20770

-----Original Message-----
From: Art Botterell [mailto:acb@incident.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 2:26 PM
To: emergency@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [emergency] FW: Inter-Governmental Information Sharing
Standards: Meeting March 8

Friends -

In support of comments by Rex and Len... I wonder if we're in danger of
letting ourselves get bogged down in other folks' turf battles and grand
schemes to the detriment of the specific job we've taken on.

Per Len, I'm not sure that a degree of diversity is necessarily a bad
thing, considering the relatively early stage such standards efforts are
really at, and that we have a mechanism (namespaces) for preventing
confusion until the user base / marketplace sorts things out.

And per Rex, I'm not sure that either determining the One True
Vocabulary or harmonizing multiple standards efforts is really within
this TC's scope.  Ultimately, only the practitioners can resolve the
long-standing questions of interdisciplinary nomenclature. 
Personally, I'd be inclined to leave those questions to policy-level
groups like the EIC and, of course, to the responsible agencies
themselves (e.g., the NIMS Integration team).

In particular, I'm not sure a full-scale comparison of CAP, EDXL and
GJXDM (and IEEE 1512?) is really our job.  We've agreed to address a
specific set of requirements, which include a fairly specific example
vocabulary.  In the interests of making tangible progress, might we be
wiser to limit ourselves to searching other standards for existing
equivalents to the particular items in the EDXL Routing Block
requirements as provided by FEMA and EIC?

All these larger issues do need attention, at the appropriate time and
in the appropriate venues... but I'm suggesting that this TC may get
more done by "sticking to our knitting" than by letting ourselves be
embroiled into other people's issues.

- Art


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