Government Repositories and Content Assembly

["Paul Spencer" <paul.spencer@boynings.co.uk>]

Several people here are involved with the ebXML TC and know about what I am
trying to do here. But for the others ...

A problem I come across in UK Government is that individual Government
departments need to store XML artefacts (such as XML Schema data types),
relate them to metadata (such as a data dictionary) and build schemas from
them. Whilst doing all this, they need to manage their internal version
control at the component level while making sure they use other Government
definitions (such as those for social security numbers) or external
definitions (such as those in UBL) where appropriate. I am trying to put
together some requirements and an architecture based on this, using the UK
MOD as a model. The work of the CAM TC should be relevant to the assembly
part of this process, so David Webber suggested I involved this group.

I have discussed this in the ebXML regrep group, and am also involving the
eGov group. I have now done a first draft of those parts of the document
that I agreed with the regrep group that I would do. It is at
http://boynings.co.uk/mod/regrep-v0-2.pdf.

The next stage is to add wider requirements and come up with a
standards-based architecture to achieve these requirements. My goal is to
create an architecture using OASIS standards that can be used to allow these
registries to interact, not only within government, but also, for example,
with a UBL repository. Although I am talking about the registry (which will
obviously use ebXML standards since we are discussing it OASIS TCs) I
believe there is a lot we need to decide in terms of how the registry is
used and the client applications required. In particular, how the artefacts
in the registry should be built into schema documents. It is essential
within Government that we specify standards and architectures, but not
specific applications to be used.

My hope is that people will read this document (it is a PDF, but I am happy
to do other formats on request) and we can discuss it through this list.

Regards

Paul Spencer
Director
Boynings Consulting Ltd
http://www.boynings.co.uk