Page 5 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

United States General Accounting Office
Washington, DC 20548

April 5, 2002

The Honorable Joseph I. Lieberman
Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs
United States Senate

Dear Mr. Chairman:

This report responds to your request that we review the status of
Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology and the challenges the
federal government faces in implementing it. XML is a flexible,
nonproprietary set of standards designed to facilitate the exchange of
information among disparate computer systems, using the Internet’s
protocols. Specifically, we agreed to assess (1) the overall development
status of XML standards to determine whether they are ready for
governmentwide use and (2) challenges faced by the federal government
in optimizing its adoption of XML technology to promote broad
information sharing and systems interoperability. The report recommends
that the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) take
steps to improve the federal government’s planning for adoption of XML.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of
this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the
report date. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the ranking
minority member, Committee on Governmental Affairs, and interested
congressional committees. We will also send copies to the director of
OMB. Copies will be made available to others upon request. The report
will also be available on our home page http://www.gao.gov.

If you have any questions concerning this report, please call me at (202)
512-6257 or send e-mail to mcclured@gao.gov. Other major contributors
included Barbara S. Collier, John de Ferrari, Chetna Lal, Steven Law, Anh
Le, John C. Martin, and Mark D. Shaw.

Sincerely yours,

David L. McClure
Director, Information Technology Management Issues

Page 1 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government