How the US Federal Government is Using XML

Copyright © 2003 Kenneth B. Sall and SiloSmashers. All Rights Reserved.

How the US Federal Government is Using XML:

An Overview of Selected US Federal Agency Efforts

XML 2003, Philadelphia, PA

December 11, 2003

Ken Sall, [email protected]

2Copyright © 2003 Kenneth B. Sall and SiloSmashers. All Rights Reserved.

Agenda1. Introduction

2. Legislative Motivators for XML

3. Federal Enterprise Architecture and OMB 300

4. Working Groups and Federal XML Guidance

5. E-Government Initiatives

6. Registry, Repositories and Web Services

7. Selected Specialized Applications


Introduction.1

SGML efforts circa 1988-89 (DoD, IRS, US Patent and Trade Office)

General Accounting Office (GAO) reports, April and August, 2002:– Identify, integrate, and process information that is

widely dispersed among systems and agencies– Conduct transactions based on exchanging and

processing such information – Encourage agencies to indicate how XML will

become part of their enterprise architecture – Build registries and repositories to promote

interoperability

FEA, OMB, legislative motivators


Introduction.2 – Sample Agencies DOC (Department of Commerce)

DoD (Department of Defense)

DOI (Department of the Interior)

DOJ (Department of Justice)

DON (Department of Navy)

EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)

GSA (General Services Administration)

IRS (Internal Revenue Service)

NARA (National Archives and Records Administration)

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

SBA (Small Business Administration)

NOTE: This list is not meant to include all US agencies with mature XML efforts. It is merely a representative subset of the author's selection.


Legislative Motivators

Clinger-Cohen Act

Government Paperwork Elimination Act

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act

H.R. 2458, The E-Government Act of 2002


Legislative Motivators.1

Clinger-Cohen Act (1996)– Streamline IT acquisitions and emphasize

life cycle– Encourages business process

reengineering and COTS



Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA, 10/1998 10/2003)– Grants full validity to electronic forms– Encourages electronic signature

alternatives, including digital signatures– Speed transmission of data and reduce

transaction costs



Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (1998)– Accessibility; requires agencies to make IT

accessible to people with disabilities – XForms, SVG, XHTML, Web Accessibility

Initiative (WAI)



H.R. 2458, The E-Government Act of 2002– Established Office of Electronic Government to

direct E-Gov Initiatives– Promotes innovative uses of IT, particularly

initiatives involving multi-agency collaboration– Established Chief Information Officers Council

(CIOC) to develop recommendations and best practices

– Explicitly mentions “Extensible Markup Language”


Federal Enterprise Architecture and the OMB 300

FEA Reference Models

OMB 300 as XML Schema

InfoPath Implementation of an OMB 300 E-Form


Where’s the XML?.1

June 2000: Mark Forman– Became first head of federal IT, essentially

the CIO for entire US Federal Government

– Led effort to define and implement the Presidential E-Government Initiatives

– 2002: XML enables us to collect data once and use it many times; allows us to do electronic transactions as opposed to filling out paper forms


Where’s the XML?.2

October 2003: Dept. of Energy CIO Karen Evans– Replaced Forman as OMB's Associate

Director for IT and E-Government

– Taxonomy for government; same language to describe the same concepts

– Develop standards for XML data definitions so information can be shared and accessed easily regardless of its origins


Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference Models.1

FEA is Business-Driven– Encourages collaboration and resource

sharing across agencies

– Identify opportunities to leverage technology and alleviate redundancy

– IT investments must be aligned against each Reference Model


Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference Models.2

FEA Reference Models (www.FEAPMO.gov)– PRM: Performance Reference Model– BRM: Business Reference Model– SRM: Service Component Reference Model– DRM: Data and Information Reference Model– TRM: Technical Reference Model


InfoPath Implementation of OMB 300 E-Form.1 Office of Mgmnt and Budget Exhibit 300

– Establishes policy for planning, budgeting, acquisition and management of Federal capital assets

– Detailed instructions on budget justification and reporting requirements for major IT investments

– Microsoft and other companies have been working with OMB to develop an XML Schema to be used in fiscal year 2005 budget submissions


InfoPath Implementation of OMB 300 E-Form.2 InfoPath 2003

– Hybrid tool that combines word processor editing with data-capture capabilities of forms

– Uses a custom-defined XML Schema (OMB300v2.92.xsd, in this case) to constrain and guide editing the form

– Consumes and produces XML Schemas and XSLT stylesheets, and is integrated with XML Web services standards such as SOAP

– Data can be submitted in XML format via SOAP or by means of the more conventional HTTP POST method


InfoPath: OMB 300 E-Form.3

Copyright © 2003 Microsoft Corporation


Working Groups and Federal XML Guidance XML Working Group

Web Services Working Group

E-Forms for E-Gov Pilot

Department of Navy XML Work Group

Environmental Protection Agency XML Design Rules


Working Groups.1 XML Working Group (Sept. 2000)

– XML Developer's Guide (April 2002)– Recommended XML Namespace for

Government Organizations (Mar/Aug 2003)– Numerous technical presentations from

Software vendors Hardware vendors Standards groups

– Listserv– Monthly meetings in Washington, DC– Community of Practice

Owen Ambur and Lee Ellis, co-chairs (formerly Marion Royal)


Working Groups.2 Web Services Working Group (Dec. 2002)

– Support the Emerging Technology Subcommittee of the CIO Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee

– Produce incubator pilot projects in support of E-Gov Initiatives that use XML Web Services to demonstrate increased accessibility and interoperability

– Listserv and monthly meetings in DC– “Government Semantic XML Web Services

Community of Practice” (Oct. 2003)– Also www.ComponentTechnology.org

Brand Niemann, Chair


E-Forms for E-Gov Pilot.1

OMB Requested Cross-Agency E-Forms– Over 120 business cases for FY2003 called

for E-Forms; 170 for FY2004– SBA report: 10% decrease would yield $32

billion in savings (citizens and businesses)


E-Forms for E-Gov Pilot.2

E-Forms Pilot– Brand Neimann selected Rick Rogers, CEO

of Fenestra (March to July 2003)– 10 subteams to explore various facets of E-

Forms: Accessibility, Business Case, Client Specifications, Fixed Content and Behavior, Form Selection, Presentation, Records-Keeping, Schema, Security, and Services

– Selected 5 prominent forms for XSD– Drafted security guidelines– Report on www.Fenestra.com/eforms


Federal XML Guidance.1

Topics usually covered– Selecting XML Standards for Project Use – Importance of International Standards – Creating ISO 11179 Names – Creating XML Element Names from Business

Terms – Case Conventions – Usage of Acronyms and Abbreviations – Adding Comments and Metadata – When to Use XML Schema vs. DTDs [cont…]



Topics usually covered [continued]– Schema Development Methodology – When to Use Attributes vs. Elements – Global vs. Local Elements and Attributes – Enumeration of Data Values (Code Lists) – Constraining Data Values – XML Namespaces – Web Services Best Practices – XSLT Best Practices – Unresolved Issues



Department of Navy XML Work Group– “Exploit XML as an enabling technology to

achieve interoperability in support of maritime information superiority”

– DON encourages adherence to international standards such as ISO 11179, UBL, and ebXML

– DON XML Developer's Guide has very detailed DTD and XML Schema guidance

– Schema Development Checklist– V1.1: May 2002 and V2.0: Dec. 2003?? [TBD]



EPA XML Design Rules (Oct. 2003)– XML Design Rules and Conventions for the

Environmental Exchange Network

– Partially like a tutorial

– Detailed Pros and Cons

– Rules and Guidelines

– Justifications


E-Government Initiatives

Integrated Acquisition Environment: GSA

E-Travel: GSA

Business Gateway: SBA

E-Records Management: NARA

Recreation One-Stop: DOI


E-Government Initiatives.1

Presidential Management Agenda – October 2001: President's Management

Council approves 24 Presidential Priority E-Government initiatives

– February 2002: President Bush outlined an E-Government strategy to make it easier for citizens and businesses to interact with the government, eliminate redundant systems, save taxpayer dollars, and streamline citizen-to-government communications


E-Government Initiatives.2 Four Portfolios + One Cross-cutting

– Government to Citizen (G2C) - on-line access to information and services

– Government to Business (G2B) - access to information and enable digital communication using the language of e-business (XML).

– Government to Government (G2G) - enable federal, state and local governments to more easily work together

– Internal Efficiency and Effectiveness (IEE) - modernize internal processes to reduce costs for federal government agency administration.

– E-Authentication - reduce number of credentials



Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE)

– $250B on acquisition of goods and services

– Common acquisition functions, such as maintenance of information about suppliers (e.g., capabilities, past performance histories) will be managed as a shared service



Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE)– Standard eTransactions vocabulary to

facilitate exchange of data between and within agencies

– Over 254,000 registered suppliers– 20+ Shared Systems, different Data

Dictionaries, different agencies. Example systems:

Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) Past Performance Information Retrieval System Federal Procurement Data System - NG Central Contractor Registration Business Partners Network


E-Government Initiatives.5 IAE Standard eTransactions Development

– FEA DRM: data modeling using UML, ISO/IEC 11179 data element naming, UBL, and UN/CEFACT Core Component principals

– XML Schema development to define the precise structure of Information Exchange payloads

– Data normalization results in Business Information Entities (BIEs), data elements with a business context


E-Government Initiatives.6 IAE Standard eTransactions Development

– Collection of related pieces of business information are Aggregate Business Information Entity (ABIE)

– ABIE becomes a complex type (e.g., ContactInformationDetails) in XSD

– Modular transactional and validation XML Schema will result from combining the ABIEs into Information Exchanges

– Back office systems can map using XSLT stylesheets


Registry, Repositories and Web Services GSA-NIST Proof-of-Concept XML

Registry/Repository

GSA Consolidated Component Repository

EPA's Environmental Data Registry

DoD XML Registry

DISA Registry Initiative

Web Services and Registries Pilot


Registry, Repositories.1

GSA Consolidated Component Repository– Government-wide Registry and Repository– Will evolve into collaborative environment for

creation and sharing of reusable FEA components

– E-Government Initiatives, data models, XML artifacts (e.g., XML Schema and XSLT stylesheets), COTS configuration files, executables, source code, scripts, and supporting documentation

– Awarded Oct. 2003 to SAIC, CollabNet and Sun



DoD XML and Metadata Registries– Part of Common Operating Environment– Run by DISA (Defense Information Systems

Agency) – Guidance in generation and use of XML

among DoD Community of Interest (COI)– Authoritative source for registered XML data

and metadata components – Information Resource: XML element,

attribute, simple type, complex type, DTD, XSD, XSLT stylesheet, etc.



DoD XML and Metadata Registries– Register for automatic email notification

when resource is updated or removed – Namespace represents a collection of data

constructs that share a common context within a Community of Interest (COI)

– Registering Information Resources requires a submission package (ZIP file) containing documents, elements, schema, etc. to be registered


Selected Specialized Applications

IRS Publications, Instructions, and Guidance

House of Representatives XML and Legislative Documents

Justice XML Data Dictionary and Registry

Generalized Instrument Design System (GIDS): Census Bureau

EPA Emergency Response VoiceXML Application for DHS

Semantic Web


Specialized Applications.1

Justice XML Data Dictionary (JXDD)– Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and Global

Justice Information Network Advisory Committee (Global)

– Standards based (XSD, RDF, ISO 11179, UN / CEFACT ebXML Core Components Technical Spec, etc)

– 16,000 data elements from 35 different Justice and Public Safety sources

– By removing redundancies, the set was reduced to 2,000 unique data elements

– 300 core data object types (reusable components) defined


Specialized Applications.2

– Person can be described in terms of physical characteristics, biometric data, or sociocultural descriptors.

– When a person is considered in the context of another object, such as a vehicle, a variety of relationships can be expressed.

Justice XML Registry/Repository (JXRR)– Data Dictionary, various XML artifacts (e.g.,

XML Schemas, DTDs, XML Instance Documents, stylesheets), metadata, related business processes, and other supporting components.


301-725-2859www.KenSall.com

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