Page 9 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

Executive Summary

challenges as it attempts to gain the most from XML’s potential.
Specifically:

• No explicit governmentwide strategy for XML adoption has been defined
to guide agency implementation efforts and ensure that agency enterprise
architectures address incorporation of XML. Although agencies need
flexibility to tailor XML-based systems to meet their unique needs, they
risk building and buying systems that will not work with each other in the
future if their efforts do not take place within the context of a well-defined
strategy.
• The needs of federal agencies have not been uniformly identified and
consolidated so that they can be represented effectively before key
standards-setting bodies. It will be important for the federal government to
leverage and build upon commercially developed standards and XML
vocabularies as they become mature and widely accepted. If federal
requirements are not better understood and consolidated, the government
may be unable to effectively provide input to these standards while they
are still under development.
• The government has not yet established a registry of government-unique
XML data structures (such as data element tags and associated data
definitions) that system developers can consult when building or
modifying XML-based systems. Without such a registry, developers are
less likely to build systems using compatible data definitions, which would
likely defeat the goal of broad data access and exchange. In order to
establish such a registry, policies and procedures for adding tag definitions
and maintaining the system would also be needed and have not yet been
developed.
• Much also needs to be done to ensure that agencies address XML
implementation through enterprise architectures so that they can
maximize XML’s benefits and forestall costly future reworking of their
systems.

To address these challenges, GAO is making recommendations to the
director, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to enhance federal
planning for adoption of XML.

Page 5 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government