Page 60 - 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

Once management policies and procedures are established, funding
mechanisms will also be needed to support ongoing operation of the
governmentwide registry. According to industry and XML Working Group
officials, registry projects in the private sector to date have required
significant commitments of resources. Thus it would be important to
assess and plan for the expected costs of such an undertaking.

XML Implementations Planning the effective use of a standard such as XML to promote data
interoperability is part of the larger process of establishing and
Can Be More implementing an enterprise architecture. According to the CIO Council, 7
6
Effective within the an enterprise architecture establishes an agencywide roadmap to achieve
an agency’s mission through optimal performance of its core business
Context of an processes within an efficient IT environment. Data, as a corporate asset,
Enterprise are key to an agency’s vision, mission, goals, and daily work routine. The
more efficiently an agency gathers, stores, uses, and protects data, the
Architecture more productive it is. Thus, one of the major goals in developing an
architecture is to minimize the burden of data collection, streamline data
storage, and enhance data access. Planning XML usage within the context
of an agency’s enterprise architecture can contribute significantly to
achieving this objective.

A major component of an enterprise architecture is a standards profile,
which defines the set of rules that governs systems implementation and
operation. If agencies have a business need for XML, then the standards
profile should be used to document the way in which XML standards and
products will be used.

Without an effort to build an enterprise architecture, including the
underlying data architecture, implementing XML is likely to provide only a
patchwork solution to systems interoperability. Typically, if multiple
systems have been developed independently and without an overall
architecture, they are likely to use many data element definitions and
structures that overlap in function or are completely redundant. In
addition, secondary or tertiary data elements—data that do not represent

6
An enterprise architecture is an institutional systems blueprint that defines in both
business and technology terms the organization’s current and target operating
environments and provides a road map for moving between the two.
7
Chief Information Officers Council, A Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise
Architecture, Version 1.0 (February 2001).

Page 56 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government