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Task
Force Pushes Universal Computer Language
By Karen Robb
FEDERAL TIMES STAFF WRITER
An interagency task force is
working on a project it thinks will enable different government
computer systems to swap data more easily.
The solution, members of the
group say, is for agencies to switch to a new software language
and for agencies to adopt similar techniques for labeling their
computer data with that software language.
Already used extensively by
private industry, extensible markup language (XML) can overcome
interoperability pro-blems that arise among in-compatible information
technology systems.
Driving the effort to improve
interoperability among different computer systems is the 1998
Government Paperwork Elimination Act. That law requires agencies
to accept transactions from the public electronically, when
practical, by 2003.
But agencies may not meet this
goal because of their inability to easily transfer electronic
data between dif-ferent information systems.
“Agencies could comply with
the letter of the law and just rekey the information” to transfer
information from one system to another, said Owen Ambur, systems
analyst at the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service.
“But if we want to do it right, we will embrace XML.”
Ambur is co-chairman of the
interagency XML Working Group, which tries to promote wider
use of XML in government. That group is part of the interagency
Chief Information Officers Council.
XML is a language that can
be easily read and understood by computer users and by other
computer languages, said Mark Gross, president of Data Conversion
Laboratory in Fresh Meadows, N.Y.
Unlike other computer languages,
such as those commonly used for word processing and document
scanning, XML has a labeling system that allows information
to be sorted, searched and stored in a variety of ways.
It can be expensive to convert
documents from one computer language to XML, Gross said. But
the expense is worthwhile because, once done, that information
can be easily transferred from system to system.
Transferring information from
one system to another, however, requires that similar types
of information be labeled similarly using XML language. For
instance, all ZIP codes must be labeled as ZIP codes so they
are transferrable from one database to another.
A lack of uniformity among
labeling systems can be a stumbling block to implementing XML,
said Robert Weideman, vice president of marketing at Cardiff
Software Inc. in Vista, Calif.
“If one form labels a data
element ‘first name’ and another ‘F. Name,’ you have lost interoperability,”
Weideman said.
Weidman said agencies have
to be careful when selecting software to implement XML because
the language is so new that standards do not yet exist.
“There are some nefarious vendors
out there that will try to sell you proprietary systems with
unique labeling systems,” Weideman said.
“That defeats the whole purpose
of using XML in the first place.”
But Gross believes the importance
of uniform labeling standards is overemphasized.
“The medical community uses
data differently than someone whose job is to repair tanks,”
he said.
“It is natural they will label
the similar elements differently.”
While differing information-labeling
techniques systems would inhibit the sharing of information
between computer systems, that problem could be overcome with
relatively simple computer fixes, he said.
“You just tell the computer
that ‘F. Name’ equals ‘first name,’ ” Gross said.
Ambur, however, views a proliferation
of many different XML labeling systems as a big problem.
“If everyone uses a proprietary
system, then citizens will have to use different software for
each agency. They aren’t going to do that,” Ambur said.
Ambur believes the way to avoid
multiple labeling systems is for government agencies to establish
a registry of labeling systems.
“That way agencies don’t have
to start from scratch. They can look at the registry and adopt
labeling systems already established by [other] agencies,” Ambur
said.
The XML Working Group hopes
to begin establishing the registry this year and complete the
project in 2002.
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