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GCN Home > 02/07/05 issue

An XML registry is key to sharing data

By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff

When the Federal CIO Council created its Emerging Technology Subcommittee in August 2003, Extensible Markup Language was high on its list of priorities. XML promises to help agencies share data more easily and devise and manage their enterprise architectures. But the work involved in making XML easy for agencies to use remains considerable.

Owen Ambur, chief XML strategist for the Interior Department, is co-chairman of the XML Community of Practice, along with Lee Ellis of the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy. GCN writer Joab Jackson interviewed Ambur about the promise—and perils—XML holds for agencies.

GCN: In your estimation, how far along are most agencies in terms of using XML?

Ambur: Most agencies are still in the early stages of beginning to take advantage of the potential of XML.

GCN: What do you see as the chief benefit that XML will bring agencies?

Ambur: XML is just a syntax, a way of structuring data. However, simple things succeed whereas complex initiatives generally fail. The genius of the Web was the simplicity of the standards that enabled it.

Now that the use of HTML is pervasive, the opportunity presents itself to make the Web smart. XML contributes toward that end by making it easy to share data, the elements of which have been clearly defined and are well understood. Thus, the benefit of XML is to facilitate the sharing of data agencies need to conduct business efficiently and effectively.

GCN: What’s the most pressing problem for agencies in implementing XML?

Ambur: XML’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: ex- tensibility. Anyone can create an XML vocabulary, and that’s good because different agencies have different data requirements. However, it can also be a problem to the degree that agencies are us- ing different terms to express the same concepts.

GCN: What XML projects have you seen that could serve as models?

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