Initial thoughts on OASIS eGovernment work in the proposed new Member Se

Dear all:

Below are a few ideas for possible work that could be the focus for the proposed new eGov Member Section. These reflect several trains of thought based upon my own previous involvement in the eGov TC (including most recently the informal meeting held in San Diego at the OASIS AGM); on my work as Chairman of the “eGovernment Focus Group” of the European Standards Agency, CEN/ISSS; on work done by and in my own company, Pensive. As you will probably know also, I have recently been elected to the OASIS Board and would want to follow the work of this Member Section as part of my Board responsibilities.

So here goes:

1. “eGovernment Upper Ontology” or “Reference Model” and eGov artefact identifiers

Several agencies have referred to the need for and have built models and ontologies for eGovernment. the question in San Diego was whether there was a role for OASIS in leveraging this work. A combination of the work of Dublin Core, high-level reference models and ontologies could provide a common method for identifying, “labelling” and describing eGovernment data, services and service components. Unique identity for such eGovernment artefacts is also growing in importance: think of it as the “EAN/UPC numbering system for eGovernment”.

2. Personal identification and data management

Several TCs, as well as groups in other Consortia (such as W3C and elsewhere) have struggled with the multiplicity of XML schema elements and other data constructs used to represent natural and legal persons and the consequent problems of interoperability between then. A recent call to find an interchange format based on vCard is an excellent example: whatever the context specific needs and representations, it is clear that public sector agencies play a central role in issuing and managing personal identifiers and could thus play an important role in developing some form of interchange protocols. A commonly agreed ebXML Core Component for personal (and organisation/company)identifier, for example?

3. Document interoperability and long-term archiving

The recent Call for proposals from the European Commission points to a clear need here [1]: this could even be an opportunity for the member Section as an entity to be involved in a serious large-scale pilot project. I don’t believe the proposed TC on doc standards interoperability can, or is scoped, to cover the wider issues of legal validity, long-term persistence, and public sector “imprimatur” on official documents (such as role of publicly issued DigSigs for document signing)

4. eGovernment resources Sharing

This has been a focus of my work in the CEN/ISSS eGov Focus Group and can be summed up as: if you want to develop a greater commitment to collaboration and willingness to share eGovernment resources between public administrations, you need to make it easier for public officials and project managers to find and share their stuff. We have worked on ideas and recommended standards for doing this, and want very much to build momentum across different agencies and consortia in developing a common standards-based model for resources sharing.

That’s all to kick off, I hope we can discuss each one in more detail as things unfold over the coming weeks.

Best regards,

Peter

[1]European Commission Call for proposals for ICT Policy Support: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/calls/call_proposals_07/index_en.htm, see page 13

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Peter F Brown

Founder, Pensive.eu

Chair, CEN eGovernment Focus Group

Co-Editor, OASIS SOA Reference Model

Lecturer at XML Summer School

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Personal:

+43 676 610 0250

http://public.xdi.org/=Peter.Brown

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