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AIIM adopts StratML

By Joab Jackson

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The AIIM Standards Board has announced that it is adding Strategic Markup Language (StratML) to its standards program of work. AIIM, based in Silver Spring, Md., is an enterprise content management association.

Owen Ambur, former senior architect at the Interior Department, and Adam Schwartz, a program analyst in the Program Management Office at the Government Printing Office, oversaw development of that schema, which is designed to encapsulate strategic plans, performance plans and performance reports in a format based on Extensible Markup Language, the association said last week.

The standardized XML template and vocabulary will allow agencies and other organizations to encode their plans and reports so that they can be easily indexed, shared and processed. They will also allow agencies to ensure that those products align with policies, standards, goals and objectives.

Four applications have been shown to support StratML: Microsoft's InfoPath and Word applications, Business Web Software's AchieveForms, and FormRouter's PDF-Fillable, Ambur said. In addition, Mark Logic Corp. is developing a StratML search service, and HyperVision is drafting a quick start guide for Word users.

John Weiler, executive director and co-founder of the Interoperability Clearinghouse, which brings together standards group for collaboration, said ICH was looking for ways to funnel strategic planning information into the architecture and acquisition process. StratML could play a part.

"Quite frankly, we never considered trying to formalize strategic planning artifacts to make this conversion easier, and [we] find the idea compelling," he wrote in an e-mail message to the AIIM standards list.

The first meeting of AIIM’s StratML committee will be held on Jan. 10 in Silver Spring, Md.

More news on related topics: Data Management, Enterprise Architecture, IT Management, Software Applications