Should emergency personnel and law enforcement be called to the scene of a suspected chemical warfare attack, the last thing these frontline workers will want to do is wrestle with incompatible IT systems. Therefore, the federal government is in the throes of linking databases scattered throughout the 22 agencies that now make up the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while tying in the efforts of state and local entities. Although a cohesive, intergovernmental network of antiterrorism systems is far from finished, XML is sure to become a key element in this orchestrated campaign.

XML is not only present in tactical initiatives, such as an antiterrorism response that mandates the tight integration of far-flung systems. it is also playing an increasing role in efforts to streamline basic, day-to-day federal operations. In fact, two years ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made open XML a cornerstone of the e-Government push, a concerted effort to develop a framework for the government to deliver services to citizens and businesses.

As DHS ramps up in the face of unprecedented national security threats, the new department is also facing huge administrative computing challenges. To unify internal operations scattered among 90+ disparate information resource management systems, DHS leadership is undertaking "eMerge2," a major business process and system overhaul effort designed to integrate DHS' financial processes from. eMerge2 will reach across budget and cost management, funds control, general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, travel, and acquisition functions. Since most enterprise integration feats of this size now hinge on XML, the technology will almost certainly factor into eMerge2.

Numerous agencies are putting e-Government goals into action through the ongoing President's Management Agenda, which entails efforts such as an IRS initiative to stop the frustrating practice of having businesses resubmit information already delivered to the federal government. The White House estimates that over six years $6 billion will be saved in using XML to facilitate electronic transmission of various corporate tax forms.

But while the federal government seems committed to harnessing the power of XML, it also seems to be taking two very distinct approaches to XML implementation. The first is a top-down approach, with government IT leaders pushing select XML standards across agencies. The second is a bottom-up approach, with individual agencies implementing XML projects at a grassroots level. Are these two approaches compatible?

Cross-Agency Standards Coming Down
The federal top-down approach to common XML standards has high-level government CIOs embarking on a concerted campaign to get all federal agencies to use a core set of XML standards through an effort spearheaded by the federal CIO Council (refer to the Data Reference Model [DRM] of the Federal Enterprise Architecture [FEA] www.cio.gov/archive/SRM_TRM_for_Agency_Review_jan_29_03.pdf). Tying all federal XML applications to select XML standards could help address a variety of vexing issues, from shoring up military data exchange and communication between federal repositories to providing tighter integration between databases scattered throughout all levels of government.

Developing cross-agency XML standards is very challenging; technical issues still exist, but more troublesome can be the political, bureaucratic, or cultural issues that crop up. Organizations differ in terms of their legacy systems and processes, missions, and perspectives on exactly what information is strategically critical. These factors easily lead to clashes when it comes time to integrate.

Consider, for instance, the often-exhausting exercise of developing schemas used to tag data from disparate organizations working together. For these schemas to be meaningful and for data to be exchanged effectively across organizational boundaries, information categories must be rigorously analyzed. Furthermore, XML data that is syntactically valid but semantically meaningless must be corrected - a laborious task involving reconciling disparate terminology used in different agencies.

Basic turf issues could then compound this seemingly relentless process and getting buy-in from entrenched personnel on common labels could prove next to impossible. Then, to make matters worse, once semantic differences are resolved, the end result may well be the creation of more abstract terms that leave ordinary people scratching their heads over exactly how to apply these confusing new terms to the concrete details of their jobs.

To offload some of this burden from individual agencies, the CIO Council is now working on the development of standard schemas and other labor-intensive chores surrounding XML standardization. Along with providing uniformity, the CIO Council also wants to free up individual program managers eager to pursue XML applications.

Grassroots XML Springing Up
Concurrent with the CIO Council's push for cross-agency XML standards, a bottom-up XML push from the grassroots is now underway throughout agencies. Military and intelligence communities, as well as civilian agencies, are at varying stages of implementing a number of IT integration projects that incorporate XML technology in a significant way. These projects build upon a fundamental strength of XML: it unifies diverse platforms, applications and communities without displacing infrastructures and processes familiar to participating users.

The leaders of these projects have decided not to hold back on XML-related forays until there is a shortlist of acceptable cross-agency standards, schemas, and repositories with the CIO Council's seal of approval. They see the need as too urgent and the opportunity as too significant (especially in a color-coded threat environment) to let the bureaucratic process run its winding course.

One department taking the lead in this regard is the US Navy - widely recognized as a pioneer in federal XML adoption. One Navy program, the Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETMs) application, uses XML to deliver a standard set of manuals to all Navy vessels and may be used to serve material to Coast Guard cutters as well.

In devising the application, the Navy asked manufacturers supplying information that will make up the manuals to ship that content in XML format using their own schemas. The understanding was that the Navy would then receive that content and build it into manuals as a separate step. Using XML, the Navy was able to import and export the manufacturers' data without having to understand the content in detail - a basic XML process known as information aggregation.

The Navy also reportedly wants the capability to let individual ships share information on their own best practices by swapping data held in varying formats. This process requires moving the IETMs application toward a more advanced process called semantic integration - the ability to manipulate content, not just data structure. To do this, the Navy is using a number of open standards, including Web Ontology Language (OWL; see sidebar). Having enjoyed heavy investment from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), OWL is an evolving specification able to transform informal business conventions into rigorous ontologies.

OWL
"Ontology" is a term that is becoming widely used to define a formal language that:

• Defines common words and concepts for a specific area of knowledge
• Allows applications and databases to share the meaning of information within that area of knowledge

Striking a Realistic Balance
IETMs are just one XML application well under way within the Navy. All of the Navy's independent XML ventures adhere to a central department-wide mandate that promotes interoperability and the use of select XML standards.

Specifically, the Navy has declared off-limits the use of any proprietary XML extensions, heeding a warning from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which in 2002 advised federal agencies to steer clear of vendor add-ons aimed at capturing market share. In late July 2004, the Navy drove home that point when it issued a groundbreaking XML developer's guide.

The Navy's approach to XML presents a strong argument that it is possible to strike a realistic balance between promoting innovative, bottom-up implementation and establishing firm, top-down guidance. As evidence that the entire federal government may soon follow the Navy's lead - at least in the realm of prohibiting proprietary XML extensions - the CIO Council is reportedly discussing the possibility of penalties for agencies that use XML standards that are not entirely open.

Another example of giving the immediate green light on independent applications while insisting on strict adherence to existing industry standards, comes from the business community. Instead of trying to mandate uniform internal applications and data formats, industry associations and self-regulatory bodies have urged financial institutions to adopt the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) standard, which describes a way to use XBRL tags to exchange financial statements.

The finance industry's wide use of XBRL is, in large part, an effort to avoid heavy-handed efforts on the part of government regulators to impose XML-related specifications. So far, that strategy has been overwhelmingly successful. In fact, government regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seem loath to prescribe government standards and instead prefer to encourage industry standards.

A Technology for the Times
If XML is to make major improvements in the federal government - transforming the very relationship between government and U.S. businesses or transcending agency boundaries in the War on Terror - federal leaders will have to fully support both a top-down dedication to develop XML standards and a pragmatic bottom-up effort to build applications.

There is no need to wait for cross-agency authoritative data standards to apply powerful XML technologies - such as XPath, XSLT, and XQuery - to locate information in a message stream or database and seamlessly combine and swap this information among disparate sources and enterprise applications.

After all, XML's main attribute is that it is extensible, or able to break down traditional barriers to efficient data interchange without standardization of formats and vocabularies. If there was ever a time when the federal government needed such a capability, that time is now.