No Minutes this month

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to post a message noting the fact that we have no minutes this month because our meeting was postponed or cancelled, however you wish to view it due to several factors, most importantly because no one but Ranjeeth and Rex called in.

This was due to two main factors: one, that we did not receive the call info until the day before the meeting and so the info did not get onto the TC webpages until then, as well; and, two, we agreed to change the time back to 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time last month.

Lastly, the venerable phone number changed, including the 800 number, while the passcode always changes, but the new number also needs to be noted each month to see if it will change, too.

However, I did make those changes going forward and I will also keep a weather eye out for any changes in the phone number when I change the passcode each month. Hopefully, the fact that our plans, such as they are, can't be put into official train will serve to reinforce our memories about this.

I also wanted to make sure that you all know that a couple of unofficial, but actionable decisions will be moving forward in spite of this.

First, because we are transitioning into a new time period in the collective history of xml standards in this and the coming years, it is, in my opinion at least, imperative that we have an active presence on the E-Gov TC in addition to our existing connections to the WSRP TC and the Emergency Management TC. This is due to the fact that the family of approved standards that can, should, and will be used together is growing. This was the point of the presentation we made in December to the EA Collaboration Expedition Workshop #30. CAP from the Emergency Management TC is being submitted for OASIS-wide approval, though it may take more than one try to get it adopted purely due to the fact that it doesn't register on the radarscreens of the major top tier sponsor companies of OASIS like IBM, Sun, Oracle, BEA, SAP, etc, so it remains to be seen how soon this moves forward. However, in addition to WSRP 1.0, we already have two major security standards in place with SAML and XACML, which can be used by implementations of fairly logical extensions of parts of our primary base schema as is and as it will be amended shortly. (This means discovering how some of our secondary vocabularies need to be developed.)

So, I am picking up the task of getting our active presence on the E-Gov TC moving. We will be having a new member, John Sarazen, of Level8, taking on part of that task, and if things work he may be able to shoulder more of that load, but, the point I want to make is that we will be involved actively, regardless. This will be the case, barring the everpresent unforeseen developments, at least for the next few months until my own indepdent membership requires renewal, but I will cross that bridge when it is in front of me.

We do not have a Public Safety or Public Heath SC, which could handle gathering requirements for the vocabulary or vocabularies needed by that sector of government, beyond the areas covered by HPCDML, which deals with Emergency Management or the legal arena which intersects governmental concerns pervasively. All of these vocabularies need to be included and harmonized within our family of vocabularies. So, it seems to me that including that set of requirements within the general boundaries of the Mediation SC seems logical. The Mediation SC has been under development for quite a while now from its initial conception as DiplomacyML SC. While I will have to curtail my personal preference for working in HPCDML SC, this is necessary, given our lack of available warm bodies and brains. James has tentatively agreed to co-chair the HPCDML SC with me, as I move this work forward.

So, I will combine my Emergency Management TC work with E-Gov and MediationML SC to provide this needed link. I have already asked Ranjeeth and Chandra to forward their collected materials to me so I can massage a workable charter and mission statement together for TC consideration soon. Chandra is working his way through his own mountain of work in the Treasury Dept following upon his paternity leave with the birth of his family's second child, to free up enough time to start his tenure with this SC, if it works out that way. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

However, FYI we now have many connections with government contacts in GSA, EPA, Dept. of the Interior, xml.gov, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, USGS, Disaster Management Interoperability Service, and others through the Chief Information Officiers Council Enterprise Architecture efforts largely through the Science and Technology offices, all of which are settling out within the overall aegis of the Department of Homeland Security. We are positioned well to be part of the ongoing efforts to reduce duplication of efforts, implement Office of Budget and Management guidelines for IT integration within the mandates of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. In other words, we can find out what is needed and develop requirements for this vocabulary that are completely grounded in these communities of practice.

Because this message is more of an announcement than a discussion of issues, I won't get specific, but I would like you all to know that from our inception, even before we formed the TC, we have been receiving guidance through ongoing dialogs with some of our governmental contacts. So, be assured that while we have not been making a point of it, nor have we been in anything like the kind of contact this new commitment will entail, we have been gathering real world information and some very hard and uncomfortable experience in terms of applying for grants and fitting our own long term goals to some painful short term realities and we are learning, albeit slowly, how to adjust our workplans to the short term objectives that are fundable.

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