Extension of time for consultant funding requests

[John Messing <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

By action of the Steering Committee today, I have been elected as Chair
of LegalXML. 

I humbly accept this responsibility. I look forward to working with all
of you.

I wish to thank John Greacen for his untiring and invaluable leadership
of LegalXML. I will endeavor to provide a similar level of leadership
during my tenure. I am grateful for John's generous offer to help me
ease into the position, and I look forward to his continued counsel and
guidance in the months to come and beyond.

On the point of this posting, as John Greacen wrote to you last month,
the approved spending plan for the LegalXML Member Section for 2006
includes a little over $22,000 for consultant services.  The Steering
Committee’s currently intends to use these funds for TC's to obtain
technical expertise in drafting specifications and related artifacts. 
As you know, the availability of such services enabled the Electronic
Court Filing TC to complete its drafting of ECF 3.0.

If your TC desires to have OASIS hire a consultant to provide support
for your efforts, please submit a proposal to the Member Section
Steering Committee by March 1, 2006.  The address for the Steering
Committee list is included as a cc to this email.  The Steering
Committee will review the requests during its next regularly scheduled
meeting on March 8th. This is an extension of one month from a prior
deadline for all TC's pursuant to an accommodation to one TC for such
an extension.

As noted earlier, your request should include the following information:

1.  A description of the specification for which you wish technical
assistance

2.  The status of the TC’s work to date on that effort – for instance,
that you have completed a statement of requirements, developed an
architecture, etc.  The Steering Committee will want to know your TC’s
“readiness” for detailed work on a specification.

3.  An estimate of the number of hours of consulting services required
to bring the specification into existence.

4.  A rough time line for the TC’s intended development process once a
consultant has been hired.

5.  How the TC will cope with the possibility that the Member Section’s
resources will not sufficient to pay for all of the effort required to
complete the specification.

6.  How the TC will oversee the performance of the consultant and
approve consultant invoices for payment by OASIS.


We cannot guarantee that every request received will be funded.  The
Member Section resources are limited.  If multiple requests are
received, the Steering Committee will decide which request or requests
offer the greatest likelihood for return on the investment to be made.

Thank you. Best regards to all.