Feds expect XML to ease info exchanges

PHILADELPHIA'Agencies are paving the road to information sharing with Extensible Markup Language tags, schemas and registries.The CIA's Office of the Intelligence Community CIO, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Justice Department and the CIO Council last week displayed their XML efforts at the Information Sharing for Homeland Security Conference.XML will play a key role, said Timothy N. West, chairman of the Intelligence Community Metadata Working Group at the CIA. XML standards will be used to create an enterprise architecture that will build on the CIA's Intelligence Community System for Information Sharing, West said."Metadata is the key to sharing information," he said. "The intelligence community is well on its way to achieving this at the top-secret level."Sharing data below the top-secret level will require agreements among dozens of agencies and military commands, West said.With the assistance of metadata markup standards, intelligence system users can assure that information is precisely recalled, repeatably accessible, accurate and available for reuse many times, he said. Those factors increase the productivity of intelligence analysts and the data's users, he said. "The consumer can spend more time using the information and less time searching," West said.

'We are nearing the point where it may make sense' to develop a governmentwide XML strategy.

'XML Working Group's Owen Ambur

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