FW: XML.ORG E-Government Focus web content

["Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov" <Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov>]

John, colleagues,

as current editor of the newly activated xml.org focus area....
 i will be receiving responses from visitor's to the site...   below is an example of a "letter to the editor" i have received since the focus area went live.   

I suspect we will need to set-up a procedure for "aborbing" and "processing" these "letters to the editor".   We advertise on the site that it is meant to be a clearinghouse.. exchange of egov work throughout the planet.... so suggest we determine a procedure to review content provided from non-TC members/observers and a strategy of inclusion for e-gov efforts underway in various shapes and sizes that we discover via the focus area site.     

First step:  responding to Mr. Reed (below) either via the TC chair one-on-one response or individually through interested members or authoring an editor's response that summarizes all input from TC membership... ???  which approach works??

Second step:  set-up informal procedure to follow for processing future letter to the editor responses.... 

thanks for your guidance/advice   diane

-----Original Message-----
From: creed@opengis.org [mailto:creed@opengis.org]
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 1:25 PM
To: editor-fa-egov@xml.org
Cc: kurt@opengis.org
Subject: RE: XML.ORG E-Government Focus web content


To whom it may concern.

I am the Executive Director of the Open GIS (OGC) Specification Program. The OGC is a voluntary consensus standards organization. Our mission: OGC leads the development, promotion and harmonization of open geospatial standards and supports their effective implementation and use worldwide. Over the last several years, our members have defined, tested, documented, and implemented a variety of OpenGIS Specifications in E-Government applications. The use of spatial data is an integral component of many existing and planned portal applications. For example, the US Government geodata.gov portal implements several OpenGIS specifications and a major new spatially enabled e-government initiative is just beginning in Australia. To date, the OGC has 10 approved specifications that can play a role in the definition and deployment of e-government portals. Of these, several are XML based. The post significant of these is a specification called the Geography Markup Language (GML). GML is an application of XML and XML Schema for encoding geographic features, their geometry, and their attributes.

Given what I feel is the importance of these specifications to implementations of geospatially enabled E-Gov portals, I am wondering how to best collaborate to provide relevant web content for http://egovernment.xml.org/ .

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely

Carl Reed, PhD
OGC Executive Director, Specification Program

OGC - Helping the World to Communicate Geographically

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