Page 55 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

Chapter 3: The Federal Government Faces
Challenges in Realizing XML’s Full Potential

DISA participates in various standards bodies and consortiums, including
ANSI, UN/CEFACT, OASIS, W3C, the Internet Engineering Task Force,
and others. The agency has contributed to the development of the ebXML
standards suite and has applied ebXML to its own electronic business
processes. In addition, DISA is a member of the W3C Advisory Committee
and coordinates with the Defense Logistics Agency in the development of
W3C XML standards.

Although these are valuable undertakings, none is specifically designed to
serve the role of presenting unified federal requirements to standards
bodies. The government’s business processes are not necessarily the same
as the private sector’s, and in many cases government agencies may need
to define unique data types and structures. The need for a defined set of
inherently governmental data tags was highlighted in a recent study
3
conducted by the Logistics Management Institute for GSA. The Institute
was tasked to (1) identify the data elements associated with 22 commonly
used government forms and (2) determine if those data elements were
available in commercial registries. The study identified over 8,000 data
elements in the 22 specified forms. The study’s final report stated that an
intensive review of a subset of these elements found that for a very large
number of them, no corresponding entry in any of the commercial
registries was found. The Logistics Management Institute concluded that
because existing commercial registries did not focus on many of the
government’s business processes, the government would need to develop
new dictionaries of data tags, in concert with industry and the public, to
meet its needs.

Although similar needs for coordination have been successfully addressed
in the past, the federal government does not have a process for providing
consolidated input on XML to commercial standards bodies. Instead, OMB
has allowed agencies to individually pursue participation in standards
bodies to the extent that their interests and resources allow. As a result,
participation has been limited and uncoordinated because it requires a
commitment of staff resources that many agencies cannot afford,
4
according to XML Working Group officials. OMB guidelines direct

3
Mark Crawford, Donald F. Egan, and Angela Jackson, Federal Tag Standards for
Extensible Markup Language, Logistics Management Institute (June 2001).
4
Office of Management and Budget, Circular A-119, Federal Participation in the
Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment
Activities (February 10, 1998).

Page 51 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government