Metadata standards for semantic interoperability in electronic government

ABSTRACT

Effective data sharing, across government agencies and other organisations, relies upon agreed meanings and representations. A key, technological challenge in electronic governance is to ensure that the meaning of data items is accurately recorded, and accessible in an economical---effectively, automatic---fashion. In response, a variety of data and metadata standards have been put forward: from government departments, from industry groups, and from organisations such as the ISO and W3C.

This paper shows how the leading standard for metadata registration---ISO 11179---can be deployed without the need for a single, monolithic conceptualisation of the domain, and hence without the need for universal agreement upon a particular model of electronic governance. The advantages of this approach are discussed with regard to the UK eGovernment Interoperability Framework (eGIF) and the UK Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV).

REFERENCES

• 1: Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Electronic Travel Authority System. http://www.eta.immi.gov.au.
• 2: Barry Smith. Ontology. In The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information. Blackwell, 2004.
• 3: Frank Budinsky , Stephen A. Brodsky , Ed Merks, Eclipse Modeling Framework, Pearson Education, 2003
• 4: Stella Dextre Clarke. e-GIF, e-GMS and IPSV: What's In It For Us? Legal Information Management, 7(04):275--277, 2007.
• 5: cxml.org. commerce extensible markup language. http://www.cxml.org.
• 6: Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security. National Information Exchange Model. http://www.niem.gov.
• 7: Larry Fitzwater. Plenary Address: Standards Overview. 11th Metadata Open Forum, 2008.
• 8: HL7. Health Level Seven. http://www.h17.org.
• 9: International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 11179. Information technology specification and standardization of data elements. http://www.iso.org/.
• 10: Jacek Kopecký , Tomas Vitvar , Carine Bournez , Joel Farrell, SAWSDL: Semantic Annotations for WSDL and XML Schema, IEEE Internet Computing, v.11 n.6, p.60-67, November 2007 [doi>10.1109/MIC.2007.134]
• 11: NASA. Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board Phase I Report, 1999.
• 12: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Metadata online registry. http://meteor.aihw.gov.au.
• 13: Barry Smith, Werner Ceusters, and Rita Temmerman. Wüsteria. In Medical Informatics Europe, 2005.
• 14: The Open Group. Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF). www.opengroup.org/udef.
• 15: UK Highways Agency. Transport Systems Metadata Registry. http://www.itsregistry.org.uk/.
• 16: Jan Wyllie. The Integrated Public Service Vocabulary: A confusion of poly-hierarchies. Enterprise Information, 2, 2005.
• 17: The eXtended MetaData Registry (XMDR) Project. http://www.xmdr.org.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.3 Languages
          Subjects: Data manipulation languages (DML); Data description languages (DDL)
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services; Data sharing

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.4 Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods
          Subjects: Semantic networks; Relation systems

General Terms:
Languages, Standardization

Keywords:
electronic government, interoperability, metadata, ontology, semantic interoperability, semantic markup, semantic web, standards