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.
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”.
>>How about starting by
reviewing the MIREG standard we developed for the EU? Probably needs more
work but it has the basics from which to start.
Also Maewyn and I struggled with
this for years in the OeE and it ground to a halt. I think she produced a
final report on the issues but it might be worth a catch up with her?
PFB> Yes, MIReG is a start,
particularly as it developed the world’s first ever ebXMLrr prototype –
and then disappeared: I have all the original project files, as they seemed to
vanish from the European Commission’s records ;-)
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?
>> I think this would need a
significant input from government business managers as idenitfiers vary
significantly even across government. Trying to standardise these and
getting a new protocol adopted would be a huge challenge. Perhaps the
starting point should be getting a business case for adoption agreed
before getting too deep into the protocol itself.
PFB> To be clear, the
objective is not to create new identifiers (goodness knows how difficult that
has been) but rather to try to agree to common mapping mechanisms across some
common data elements, hence the reference to an ebXML CC. There is immense business
value in trying to do this, as Microsoft are seeing with their CardSpace
initiative.
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)
>> I would refer everybody to
the work being done by our National Archives on this issue.
Certainly not a topic to try and re-invent wheels.
PFB> Agreed, it’s an
excellent start: PDF/A, OOXML/XPS and ODF are all concerned with this and it
would be important to ensure that the respective key industry players are
involved.
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.
>>Is this is not an extension
of 1. above? In which case MIREG is relevant.
PFB> Not really an extension,
more a leverage point: the point is to provide common access, discovery and
sharing mechanisms, not just common identification for eGov resources: this is
covered a little in our discussion paper available at http://www.pensive.eu/uid/0079