This was a combined meeting of IRS XML stakeholders and the
Aiuvalasit, John W. John.W.Aiuvalasit@irs.gov
Altner, Bruce baltner@hq.nasa.gov
Ambur, Owen
Bailey, Jennifer Jennifer.Bailey@irs.gov
Benedict, Robert Robert.J.Benedict@nasa.gov
Brown, David Davic.C.Brown@irs.gov
Carroll, Edward R. Ed.R.Carroll@irs.gov
DeCastro, Peter M. pdecastro@mitre.org
Chase, Ed Chase@adobe.com
Delozier, Albina Albina.Delozier@irs.gov
DuVall, Brenda BDuVall@csc.com
Levine, David David.J.Levine@irs.gov
Jiang, Jonathan Jonathan.Jiang@irs.gov
Lou, Mark MLou@csc.com
Love, John C. John.C.Love@irs.gov
Mathews, Claude Claude.A.Mathews@irs.gov
Morgan, Kathleen KMorgan24@csc.com
Ortiz, Bert Bert.Ortiz@irs.gov
Peterson, Doug Doug.E.Peterson@irs.gov
Readler,
Rice, Gordon Gordon.Rice@irs.gov
Safran, Sol Sol.Safran@irs.gov
Sall, Jerry Jerry.W.Sall@irs.gov
Tayas, Manny Manny.Tayas@systinet.com
Tompkins, Earline Earline.Tompkins@irs.gov
Tongsinoon, Cindia Cindia.Tongsinoon@irs.gov
Wasko, Steven J. Steve.J.Wasko@irs.gov
Rush, Darlene darlene.rush@irs.gov
Niblett, Vicky vniblett@hq.nasa.gov
Lewis, Diane Diane.Lewis@usdoj.gov
·
Introductions
and agenda review
This was a combined
meeting to the XML Working Group and the IRS XML Stakeholders. Owen Ambur (DOI) is co-chair of the XML Working Group and Sol
Safran chairs the IRS XML Stakeholder group. We have many similar objectives
and should work cooperatively wherever possible to advance our goals.
·
Presentations
·
Judy Newton from
NIST gave a presentation on the ISO 11179 standard.
The ISO 11179 standards are available for free
download at www.jtc1.org. Metadata, as outlined by
the ISO 11179 standard is closely related to XML activities in a few areas:
A MDR metadata registry can link the XML syntax to common semantic content
XML namespaces can be defined as contexts or classifications within MDR
registries. Classifying data can exist in a wide spectrum of detail-oriented
levels: Keywords, Thesauri, Taxonomies, Ontologies
XML entities and attributes can be defined within and among namespaces
Naming convention principles can be applied to XML names. The ISO 11179 registry model is extensible. Judy provided examples of EPA’s extensions. ebXML has adopted the ISO11179 naming conventions; however there are no mechanisms to measure ebXML conformance with ISO 11179 Part 5 (Naming and Identification). The EPA System of Registries (SOR) is located at www.epa.gov/SOR, and their Environmental Data Registry is located at www.epa.gov/EDR.
Many tools that generate XSD schema do not include
data source or the capability to include company defined standards.
·
Doug Peterson
from Internet Services announced the upcoming OASIS Tax XML meeting - June 2-3
in
Information is listed on the Tax XML TC section of the OASIS site
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/tax/
·
Steve Wasko discussed the IRS Public Portal XML activities.
The IRS Public Portal team worked with MITRE to
define a taxonomy used on the public portal.
In total, this team met with 15 Business Units and 60 Staff Members to
define the taxonomy. The draft taxonomy
started with about 800 terms. The IRS Chief Consul compared their 16,000 terms
taxonomy to this one and thought they can work with the 800 terms taxonomy. Validation of draft taxonomy of IRS tax
administration terms and related thesaurus with IRS employees is nearing
completion. There are nearly 800 terms with Version 1.0 expected by June, 2004.
The team is currently working on a CONOPS which will define a strategy for
implementing the taxonomy into Vignette v7 and how to deal with legacy data.
This team is currently valuating toolsets for taxonomy, thesaurus and content
management. No decision on which tools to use. They are also researching the
capabilities of Vignette v7, which the IRS content management system.
·
Claude Matthews
presented the Content Management SCORM model and Metasoft
toolset currently being used by eLearning.
The method used for meta-data tagging IRS content is
based on SCORM, which stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. SCORM
is the reference model used to create e-learning and has been adopted as the
standard for IRS e-learning. The
meta-data tagging portion of SCORM is taken from the IEEE Learning Object
Metadata standard. Both models are based
on the Dublin Core meta-data tagging model. Metasoft is a utility that gathers
all the meta-data information and wraps it in XML binding. Wrapping this content in XML makes the
information portable and non-proprietary.
E-Learning content is registered in the Metasoft toolset. Then, when a course is being defined, the
user has the ability to pick-and-choose content to be included in the course.
Issues still exist with defining enterprise-level taxonomy.
Claude believes a collision is impending between
content management driven by Business Operating Divisions (BODS) and technology
via the data model.
·
Manny Tayas discussed UDDI Best Practices.
UDDI creates a standard, interoperable platform that
enables organizations and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find
and use shared services over standard internet protocols such as HTTP. UDDI is
standards-based and flexible. He stated the importance of taxonomy relative to
reuse. A wide variety of publish/discovery tools are available. It is becoming
widely adopted for “private usage”. The toolsets for determining impact
analysis for UDDI services are not very advanced and are only beginning to
emerge. The discussion of versioning of services is only starting to be
addressed.
Throughout the presentations, the topic of taxonomies
and the ability to cross-reference them was discussed.
Owen Ambur announced that the
next Federal CIO Council Stakeholders Meeting is June 16 in