Re: [egov] Future of eGov TC

[Eliot Christian <echristi@usgs.gov>]

Hi Peter

What you are proposing is very much along the lines of the architecture adopted for the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS). I attach here a two-pager with some relevant excerpts about the GEOSS architecture in case you may be interested. (This actually follows much the same architectural principles we agreed a couple years ago in the eGov TC--What goes around comes around!)

Eliot

At 10:35 AM 12/12/2006, Peter F Brown wrote:
>Dear all:
>
>I had interesting discussions with both Patrick Gannon and Carol Cosgrove-Sacks of OASIS at the Adoption Forum in London the other week. In the course of our talks, the issue of the future of the eGov TC arose once again.
>
>I expressed my view that the TC will only work on the basis of organic rather than synthetic developments: in other words: if we attempt to create a piece of work for the sake of demonstrating the usefulness of the committee - say "let's build an eGov upper-level ontology" then I believe we are less likely to succeed than if we identify a current gap in eGov work that the TC might be able to fill and then see what that translates into in terms of practical work.
>
>In an attempt to do just that, I would like to put to the TC a very first sketch of some work that I started on within the Austrian government and then with the European standards agency, CEN (whose 'eGov Focus Group' I nominally chair) but which hasn't got off the ground because of a contractual issue with the European Commission.
>
>The initiative was entitled "eGovernment Resources Network" and attempted to build a model with which public agencies could develop resources sharing capabilities - whether those resources be data models, requirements studies or full-blown eServices - on the backbone of a standards-based framework. An introduction to the issue can be found at www.pensive.eu/uid/0101 and a draft discussion paper at www.pensive.eu/uid/0079.
>
>In the paper, a number of recommendations are put forward including the need for an eGovernment Information Model - with which any resources made available for sharing with others can be labelled and described in a standard fashion à la SOA - and a Collaboration Framework Model - identifying and possibly defining some methods and protocols that could be deployed to identify, access, share and possibly orchestrate available resources by other public authorities.
>
>These issues have aroused a lot of interest within the European Union but the European Commission has tended to want to protect and extend current initiatives in this space but which tend towards, what I would consider a somewhat dated "give me all your stuff and we'll publish it through a portal" model rather than the "keep your own stuff but make it available in a federated environment" model that I and others have advocated.
>
>Are others facing or addressing this or similar issues around federation and re-use of (scarce and costly) public eGov resources?
>
>Would there be interest in discussing this further and taking these and other recommendations through the TC? Spawning creation of a specific TC to do this, as per the TC's charter? or any other approach?
>
>As I've stated before, I'm not in favour of artificial respiration and reanimation of a dead body but would be prepared to apply some defibrillation to establish a regular pulse of activity if there are signs of life...
>
>Best regards,
>
>Peter
>
>-------------
>Peter F Brown
>Chair, CEN eGovernment Focus Group
>Founder, Pensive.eu
>www.pensive.eu
>Co-Editor, OASIS SOA Reference Model
>Lecturer at XML Summer School
>---
>Personal:
>+43 676 610 0250
>http://public.xdi.org/=Peter.Brown
>www.XMLbyStealth.net
>www.xmlsummerschool.com

Architecture Excerpts.doc