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Chapter 4: Conclusions and Recommendations
Agency Comments In oral comments on a draft of this report, officials from OMB’s Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs, including the Information Policy and
and Our Evaluation Technology Branch chief, generally agreed with our findings and
conclusions and stated that they would consider our recommendations.
The officials also provided information on recent OMB actions aimed at
promoting the adoption of XML by federal agencies. We have incorporated
this updated information in the report. We view these recent OMB actions
as positive steps. Nevertheless, we also believe that OMB can improve on
these actions by implementing the recommendations in this report.
We received oral comments from the co-chairmen of the XML Working
Group; officials of NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory; and the
deputy associate administrator, Office of Electronic Commerce, GSA. We
also received written comments from the chief information officer,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the director for
policy and communications staff, National Archives and Records
Administration. Letters from these latter two agencies are reprinted in
appendixes I and II. All of the agency officials who reviewed the draft
agreed with the overall content of the report. Officials from the XML
Working Group and the National Archives and Records Administration
expressed concern that the draft overemphasized the value of a “top
down” XML implementation strategy that emphasizes executive direction
and guidance as opposed to a “bottom up” approach relying on individual
initiative at lower management levels. We believe that it is important to
strike a balance between the two approaches. In response to this concern,
we are including language in the final report to emphasize that a balance
between the bottom up and top down approaches is needed. In addition,
each agency provided technical comments, which have been addressed
where appropriate in the final report.
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