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At the April 2002 CENDI meeting, Mr. Liu provided a detailed overview of XML and its structure and explained NLM's goals in using this mark-up language. NLM is aiming for an infrastructute for web-based information exchange with external and internal partners. XML was selected because it offers proof against technology change, promotes interoperability, and allows for output to multiple channels. All of the MEDLINE database is in XML and its use is being promoted within the biomedical publishing community. NLM is experimenting with other uses of XML some of which include the generic presentation of content; security uses; and getting the web site to talk. Mr. Liu ends his presentation by listing several key lessons learned in the process. These include the need to take a broad and holistic approach to the use of XML; realize that it’s a major organizational change; understand the core standards and keep abreast of domain-specific standards developments; learn from and cooperate with others; the importance of stageing over time; and security needs.
At the April 2002 CENDI meeting, Mr. Nelson provided a detailed overview of the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) as background for NASA STI Program's use of XML. NASA's Technical Report Server's OAI architecture is a distributed search model and plans are to have a baseline OAI system installed at NASA's Langley Research Center. A challenge will be to achieve OAI compliance at other NASA centers. NASA and DOE Laboratories are collaborating on having a technical report exchange so that there will be a network of technical report servers across agencies.
At the April 2002 CENDI meeing, Mr. Dattoria reported that DOE is working with its laboratories in implementing XML and is letting service providers do value-added effects. The metadata standard being used is extended Dublin Core and XML is being used for exchange. The DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information's core business processes, including data import, harvesting from providers, and re-purposing of content are based on these standards.
At the April 2002 CENDI Meeting, Ms. Case enumerated many of XML's expectations by users which include: stat-of-the-art tools for document composition; the ability to produce multiple displays from a single document; easier interchange of data and documents; the ability to search within elements; to search structured data and text; and to have a query language that supported a complete set of text search operators and functions. Ms. Case pointed out that there currently is no search engine to querying XML nor is there a standard for XML querying. Ms. Case is a member of the W3C Xquery working group and is a proponent of more advanced querying concepts. Her goal is to revive some of the sophisticated search functions for web-based searching. The Library of Congress has a keen interest in XML search capabilities but has pointed out that many key search functions are missing, e.g., thesaurus support, character normalization, stemming, stop word lists, and proximity searching.
At the April 2002 CENDI meeting, Ms. Carnahan advised that the CIO Council established an XML Working Group whose goal is to accelerate, facilitate, and catalyze the effective implementation of XML technology in the federal government. The Group's activities span both public and private business and includes developing best practices and recommended standard; establishing partnerships with industry, the public sector, and the government; and conducting research-oriented education and outreach. Ms. Carnahan explained that the Group is divided into several teams, one of which deals with registries and repositories. She described the purpose of the Registry team as being to facilitate the awareness and appropriate reuse of existing data element definitions, schemas, and related documents. The Registry is a service for depositing SML DTDs and other related information and is developing a prototype registry as a proof of concept. The operational registry will be a a series of distributed registries rather than a centralized one.
At the April 2002 CENDI meeting, Ms. Frangakis covered NAL's past and current activities involving the preservation of USDA digital materials. Major accomplishments to date include the development of a survey instrument to identify digital publications produced by USDA; a metadata conference for USDA staff to raise awareness and to educate staff to achieve buy in; and the development of draft digital preservation guidelines. Technical requirements for the long-term management of digital publications continue to be developed and funding continues to be a challenge for this effort. Ms. Frangakis closed by saying that the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model is being used and that they have successfully mapped their prototype to this model. Other standards and processes (MARC, Dublin Core, and CORC) have been incorporated as well.
The workshop addresses information server technologies, search technologies and directory and online services. Participants are proponents of repository interface standards for distributed indexing and searching. The report begins with a two page summary of topics and outcomes. Three technical sessions were held on Distributed Data Collection, Data Transfer Formats, and Distributed Search Architectures. Follow-on discussion was on indexing and collecting information needed for indexing. Slides, session notes, outcomes, and quotes are included. Participant and position papers are available in PDF, Postscript and Word format. Standards to support searching and metadata tags were among topics discussed.
These are the recommendations of the XML Working Group to the CIO Council to establish a working group to coordinate and support a program for using XML technology. The Group believes XML offers a non-proprietary and inexpensive way to achieve a high degree of interoperability among hetergeneous systems. XML also offers a way to promote the reuse of data by providing a way to locate it and by providing a standard way to transform and move it between applications. Some of the recommended areas for action for the new working group would include developing XML best practices and standards, partnerships with key industry and public groups, partnerships with existing Federal communities to accelerate the delivery of XML benefits, and plans for education and outreach.
The report provides GAO's assessment as to whether the development of XML is at a point appropriate for government use and what challenges the government will face in broadly adopting XML.
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