The Federal CIO Council's Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice SICoP

1
The Federal CIO Council's Semantic
Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP)

• Presentation at the XML 2004 Conference,
  Washington, D.C.
• Brand Niemann
• Co-Chair Semantic Interoperability Community of
  Practice (SICoP)
• Best Practices Committee (BPC), CIO Council, and
• Enterprise Architecture Team, Office of
  Environmental Information
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• November 16, 2004

2
Overview

• 1. Background
• 1.1 Major Milestones
• 1.2 Charter Excerpts
• 1.3 Collaboration with Other CoPs
• 2. Current Activities
• 2.1 Member Accomplishments and Contours of
  Practice
• 2.2 White Paper Modules
• 2.3 Examples of Semantic Web Interoperability
  Markup
• 2.4 Second Annual Semantic Technologies for
  eGovernment Conference
• 2.5 This Conference
• 2.6 Relationship to Enterprise Architecture and
  Service-Oriented Architecture
• 3. Future Activities
• Acknowledgements
• Town Hall, Wednesday, 7-9 p.m.
• Exhibit 100

3
1.1 Major Milestones

• The major milestones in the formation of the
  SICoP were as follows
• (1) The CIO Councils XML Web Services Working
  Group (08/2002-09/2003) Semantic Technologies for
  eGovernment Pilot by TopQuadrant
• See http//web-services.gov
• (2) Semantic Technologies for eGov Conference at
  the White House Conference Center, September 8,
  2003)
• See the proceedings at http//www.topquadrant.com/
  conferences/tq_proceedings.htm
• (3) Semantic Technology Training Series (December
  2003, March 2004, and July 2004) by TopMIND
  (TopQuadrant and Professor Jim Hendler).
• (4) CIO Councils Best Practices/Knowledge
  Management Working Group Discussions About a
  Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice
  (October 2003) Because of the strong History of
  CoPs and Collaboration Tools within the Knowledge
  Management Working Group
• See http//Km.Gov

4
1.1 Major Milestones

• The major milestones in the formation of the
  SICoP were as follows (continued)
• (5) Planning Meetings to Draft Charter and Decide
  on Initial Products (October 15, 2003, and
  January 15 and February 19, 2004).
• (6) Understanding Semantic Web Technology by
  Hendler and Niemann, at The Web Enabled eGov
  Conference, February 4, 2004.
• (7) Kickoff Meeting (April 14, 2004) and
  Subsequent Meetings to the Present Date.
• See Ken Salls paper at this conference for a
  more complete history of How the US Federal
  Government is Using XML One Year Later .

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1.2 Charter Excerpts

• The Semantic Interoperability Community of
  Practice (SICoP) is established by a group of
  individuals for the purpose of achieving
  "semantic interoperability" and "semantic data
  integration" in the government sector.
• The SICoP seeks to enable Semantic
  Interoperability, specifically the
  "operationalizing" of these technologies and
  approaches, through online conversation,
  meetings, tutorials, conferences, pilot projects,
  and other activities aimed at developing and
  disseminating best practices.
• The individuals making up this CoP represent a
  broad range of government organizations and the
  industry and academic partners that support them.
  However, the SICoP claims neither formal nor
  implied endorsements by the organizations
  represented.

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1.2 Charter Excerpts

• The SICoP is a Special Interest Group (SIG)
  within the Knowledge Management Working Group
  (KMWG) sponsored by the Best Practices Committee
  of the Chief Information Officers Council, (CIOC)
  in partnership with the Federal XML Working
  Group, among others.
• The SICoP through the KM.Gov Working Group will
  communicate its actions and findings to the
  Committee, the CIO Council and its member
  agencies, although its main purpose to support
  CoP members in their efforts to make the Semantic
  Web operational in their agencies.

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Organizational Relationships for Semantic
Harmonization Across the Federal Government
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1.3 Collaboration with Other CoPs

• An excellent example of SICoP common interest and
  collaboration with the Government XML CoP (
  http//xml.gov ) is that from David Webbers,
  July 5th, 2004, posting to the CIO Councils XML
  WG ListServ (excerpts)
• ..assuming XSD worked flawlessly today - then
  there is still a huge gap in its performance
  capabilities - when it comes to agile
  interoperable information exchanges.
• That is why I am arguing the need to augment XSD,
  not just with CAM, but with registries containing
  vocabularies and standard components, semantic
  tools - like OWL, and build an infrastructure for
  attaining interoperable systems.
• Note Tim Berners-Lee made this same point in an
  earlier International Semantic Web 2003
  Conference Keynote presentation on the topic
  What Semantic Web Web Services (SWWS) can offer
  Web Services (WS), namely to Get rid of
  DTD/Schema-fragility among other things.
• This reminds me of the advertising slogan I saw
  recently for Country Candies Peanut Brittle You
  Cant Be Flexible When It Comes to Brittle.

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1.3 Collaboration with Other CoPs

• SICoP is also collaborating with the Ontolog
  Forum
• SICoP and the Ontolog Forum represent two
  Communities of Practice that cover the domain of
  Semantic Engineering work -- with one being a
  government effort, and the other a citizen
  effort
• July 7, 2004, a joint meeting where members of
  both communities met face-to-face, for the first
  time, to discuss opportunities for members from
  both communities to share their challenges and
  experiences on multiple levels (behaviorally,
  organizationally, technically), how they each
  leverage their tools, processes and people ...
  and so on.
• August 12, 2004, SICoP and Ontolog held a joint
  conference call to develop suggestions to
  "semantify" the Federal Health Architecture (FHA)
  and its interoperability for the FHA
  Interoperability Working Group (e.g. SNOWMED in
  OWL and UML to OWL, etc.).
• The FHA is one of the five OMB Lines of Business
  (LoB) within the Federal Enterprise Architecture
  Program.

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2.1 Member Accomplishments and Contours of
Practice

• Some SICoP member accomplishments are as follows
• Dr. Rick Morris, Nancy Faget, and Kathy Romero,
  Organizers, Semantic Web Track and White Paper
  Series Announcement at the Army Knowledge
  Management Conference, August 31-September 2,
  2004, in Support of the Battle Command Knowledge
  System (BCKS).
• Dr. Yaser Bishr, CTO, Image Matters LLC, is now
  the principal investigator for a National
  Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) project to
  help set the framework and guidelines for
  building the Geospatial Ontology to support
  Geospatial Intelligence Analysis for years to
  come.
• Michael Daconta becomes the Metadata Program
  Manager for the U. S. Department of Homeland
  Security and a Keynote Speaker at the XML 2004
  Conference, November 15-19th.
• Jeff Pollack and Ralph Hodgson, Adaptive
  Information Improving Business Through Semantic
  Interoperability, Grid Computing Enterprise
  Integration, Wiley-Interscience, September 2004.

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(No Transcript)
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Dynamic Knowledge Repository (Community Wiki)
Purple number and RSS enabled!
See http//colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SICoP
13
Dynamic Knowledge Repository (Best Practices)
See http//web-services.gov, Dynamic Knowledge
Repositories, Best Practices
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2.2 White Paper Modules

• The SICoP White Paper Modules Their Team Leads
  are as follows
• Module 1 Introducing Semantic Technologies and
  the Vision of the Semantic Web, Jie-Hong
  Morrison, Computer Technologies Consultants, and
  Ken Fromm, Loomia.
• Module 2 Exploring the Business Value of
  Semantic Interoperability, Irene Polikoff,
  TopQuadrant.
• Module 3 Implementing the Semantic Web, Michael
  Daconta, US Department of Homeland Security.

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Module 1 Introducing Semantic Technologies and
the Vision of the Semantic Web

• Introduction to the White Paper Series
• 1.0 Executive Summary
• 2.0 Introduction to Semantic Computing
• 2.1 Semantic Conflicts within the Enterprise
• 2.2 Semantic Issues within the World Wide Web
• 2.3 Key Capabilities of Semantic Computing (see
  next slide)
• 3.0 The Vision of the Semantic Web
• 4.0 Key Concepts
• 5.0 Core Building Blocks
• 6.0 Semantic Tools and Components
• 7.0 Applications of Semantic Technologies
• 8.0 Additional Topics
• 9.0 References
• Footnotes
• Appendix A Organizational Charter
• Appendix B Definitions and Terms
• Case Studies

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Figure 3 Three Dimensions of Semantic Computing
Adapted by Richard Murphy, GSA (and SICoP Member).
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2.3 Examples of Semantic Web Interoperability
Markup

• The Semantic Web A Path to Large-Scale
  Interoperability, by Frank Manola, Mary
  Pulvermacher, and Leo Obrst, MITRE The Edge
  Information Interoperability Issue (Summer 2004)
• http//www.mitre.org/news/the_edge/summer_04/manol
  a.html
• The idea of describing things using simple
  subject-predicate-object statements or triples,
  such as
• serial number 82735 is an Aircraft, or
• serial number 82735 needs part part456
• using RDF which provides an XML-based language
  for writing such statements, using vocabularies
  based on Web Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)
  rather than on ordinary words
• usafsn82735 rdftype usafAircraft
• usafsn82735 usafneedsPart usafpart456

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2.3 Examples of Semantic Web Interoperability
Markup (continued)

• In addition to providing RDF to describe things
  using simple statements, the Semantic Web effort
  has given us the RDF-based ontology language
  called OWL. An ontology provides a
  machine-processable description of the terms
  (such as usafAircraft or usafneedsPart) that an
  organization or application can use, as well as
  aspects of the meanings of those terms. When two
  or more organizations or applications need to
  interoperate, their ontologies can provide the
  basis for understanding the terms each is using,
  the differences among them, and how to resolve
  those differences.
• For example, an OWL ontology might specify that
  an F15 is a kind of aircraft using the statement
• UsafF15 rdfssubClassOf usafAircraft
• Because OWL is based on RDF, an OWL ontology
  simply enriches the original graph of information
  by adding further triples to it.
• Beyond ontologies, the Semantic Web defines a
  rule layer to further enrich these descriptions,
  e.g., to define myOntaltitude as distance over
  the earths surface (an ontology used by another
  organization might define anotherOntaltitude as
  distance from the earth's center), or to state
  that myOntweight in kilograms myOntweight
  2.2046 in pounds.

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2.4 Second Annual Semantic Technologies for
eGovernment Conference

• Last year's First Semantic Technology for
  eGovernment Conference at the White House
  Conference Center, September 8, 2003, was
  oversubscribed so in response to a growing
  interest in the use of the Semantic Web and
  Technology in government the conference was
  scheduled to take place at a larger facility and
  the program was extended as well to a two day
  event. The proceedings are still available
• http//www.topquadrant.com/conferences/tq_proceedi
  ngs.htm
• This year's event was twice the size of last
  year's. Over 300 individuals registered. More
  than 40 Defense and civilian agencies sent
  personnel. Also, more than 50 major contractor
  organizations were represented. In essence, a CIO
  Council Pilot Project became the First Annual
  Conference which fostered the SICoP which
  produces the White Paper Series and became a
  public-private partnership to produce the Second
  Annual Conference! All are invited to join the
  SICoP and help write the next amazing chapter.
  The proceedings are available
• http//www.topquadrant.com/conferences/sept8_2004/
  stgov04_proceedings.htm

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2.4 Second Annual Semantic Technologies for
eGovernment Conference

• Awards and Recognitions were given at the Second
  Semantic Technologies for E-Government Conference
  to and for
• Best Paper Award to Brad Bebee, Mike Personick,
  Bryan Thompson, Bijan Parsia, and Curt Soechtig
  and
• Special Recognitions to (a) Jie-hong Chen
  Morrison for Outstanding Leadership of the SICoP
  Module 1 White Paper and to (b) Irene Polikoff
  for Outstanding Contributions As a Member of the
  Planning Committee.

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2.5 This Conference

• Some of the SICoP members and participants in
  SICoP activities participating in the XML 2004
  Conference are
• Keynote - Creating Relevance and Reuse With
  Targeted Semantics. Michael Daconta, Metadata
  Program Manager, Department of Homeland Security,
  United States.
• Government Track - How the US Federal Government
  is Using XML One Year Later. Kenneth Sall, XML
  Specialist, SiloSmashers, United States.
• Government Track - The Federal CIO Council's
  Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice
  (SICoP). Brand Niemann, Computer Scientist, US
  EPA, United States.
• Product Presentation - The Tucana Knowledge
  Server version 2.1 and Late Breaking - RDF
  Metadata in XHTML. David Wood, CTO, Tucana
  Technologies, Inc., United States.

22
2.5 This Conference

• Some of the SICoP members and participants in
  SICoP activities participating in the XML 2004
  Conference are (continued)
• Incubator TopBraid, Semantic Quiz, and
  Government pilot for an FEA Capabilities and
  Reuse Manager. TopQuadrant, United States.
• Storing XML Track - Managing Medical Ontologies
  using OWL and an e-business Registry /
  Repository. Carl Mattocks, CEO, CHECKMi, United
  States.
• Tutorial - The Semantic Web Building
  Applications with RDF OWL. Irene Polikoff,
  Executive Partner, TopQuadrant, United States.
• Tutorial - Semantic Integration Using Topic Maps.
  Steven Newcomb, Consultant and Michel Biezunski,
  Consultant, Coolheads Consulting, United States.

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2.6 Relationship to Enterprise Architecture and
Service-Oriented Architecture

• As recent presentation entitled Be Enterprising
  to the Federal Enterprise Architecture community
  on the European Interoperability Framework by
  Jaap, Schekkerman, Founder, President and Thought
  Leader of the Institute for Enterprise
  Architecture Development (IFEAD), July 3, 2004,
  made the distinction between three types or
  levels of interoperability
• (1) Organizational Interoperability Concerned
  with business goals, modeling business processes,
  and bring about collaboration between those
  wanting to exchange information but that may have
  different internal organizations and structures
  for their operations.
• (2) Technical Interoperability Concerned with
  the technical issues of linking up computer
  systems and services and
• (3) Semantic Interoperability Concerned with
  ensuring that the precise meaning of exchanged
  information is understandable by any other
  application not initially developed for this
  purpose.

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2.6 Relationship to Enterprise Architecture and
Service-Oriented Architecture

• Paradigm Shift in the Federal Enterprise
  Architecture Reference Models
• The first four were about IT systems
• Performance, Business, Technical, and Service
  Component.
• The fifth is about information sharing
• Data.
• Michael Daconta has proposed a Joint XML
  CoP/SICoP DRM XML Profile (Schema and Ontology)
  for Information Sharing.
• SICoP has a White Paper Series and Pilot Projects
  for the XML 2004 (November 15-19, 2004) and the
  SWANS (Semantic Web Applications for National
  Security) (February 8-9, 2005) Conferences
• Federation of RDF/RSS feeds on emerging
  technology components and categorization of
  government information.
• RDF/OWL relationships from the semantic
  interoperability vendors and their pilots and
  knowledge discovery.

Note A Best Practice Model is FOAF-a-matic at
http//www.ldodds.com/foaf/foaf-a-matic.html
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Decentralize, But Connectable Architecture
BrowseQueryAnalyzeApp RSS feed
RSS News Reader
RDF Data Server (e.g. Tucana Knowledge Server
RSS News Syndication
Crawler
Ontology-based Web Forms
RSS/RDF Thing File
RSS/RDF Thing File
RSS/RDF Thing File
RSS/RDF Thing File
Source Demo for SWANS Conference February 2005,
Brownell Chalstrom, November 5, 2004.
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2.6 Relationship to Enterprise Architecture and
Service-Oriented Architecture

• Intelligence Community Metadata Working Group (IC
  MWG) in support of the IC and the new Executive
  Order 13356 (Lead Tasks 3A and 3B)
• Strategic Plan
• Phase 1 (November 24, 2004) 7 metadata and
  content data standards vetted.
• Phase 2 (June 2005) four additional standards,
  work on a DRM, and work to incorporate the
  Terrorist Watchlist in the Global Justice XML
  Data Model.
• Phase 3 (December 2005) DRM completed and
  standards in place.

Source November 11, 2004, E.O. 13356 Update for
Response.
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2.6 Relationship to Enterprise Architecture and
Service-Oriented Architecture

• Intelligence Community Metadata Working Group (IC
  MWG) in support of the IC and the new Executive
  Order 13356 (Lead Tasks 3A and 3B) (continued)
• Phase 1 standards (7)
• A security marking standard.
• A resource metadata standard.
• A resource metadata for discovery and exchange
  applications.
• A tearline standard for text (un-tagged)
  documents.
• A tearline standard for metadata enabled (XML)
  documents.
• An exchange standard for watchlist data.
• A data model and associated schemas for law
  enforcement and criminal justice data using the
  Global Justice XML Data Model.

Source November 11, 2004, E.O. 13356 Update for
Response.
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3. Future Activities

• The SICoP plans to continue Work on Semantic
  Interoperability in support of the following
  mandates and activities
• The E-Gov Act of 2002 (Categorization of
  Government Information)
• The Federal Enterprise Architectures Data
  Information Reference Model (DRM)
• Selected Lines of Business (e.g., Data
  Statistics and Federal Health Architecture)
• Individual E-Gov Initiatives and Agency Missions
• White Paper Modules 2 and 3.
• Coordination with and participation in the W3Cs
  Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment
  Working Group and
• Plan for the Third Semantic Technologies for
  eGovernment Conference!

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3. Future Activities

• Semantic Web Applications for National Security
  (SWANS)
• February 8-9, 2005.
• Washington, D.C.
• Sponsored by the DARPA Agent Markup Language
  (DAML) Program with SICoP participation.
• Keynotes Sir Tim Berners-Lee, General Steve
  Boutelle (Army CIO), John Gilligan (Air Force
  CIO), Steve Cooper (DHS CIO) and Mike Daconta
  (DHS Metadata Program Manager), and Professor Jim
  Hendler.
• Tutorials and Office Hours by Experts.
• Trade Show of pilot projects and implementations
  of RDF and OWL technologies.
• Proposals due December 1st (see
  http//web-services.gov, Announcements, November
  4th).
• Relates to Presidential Executive Order 13356
  Strengthening the Sharing of Terrorism
  Information to Protect Americans, August 27,
  2004.

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Acknowledgements

• The author expresses deep appreciation to his
  SICoP Co-Chair, Rick Morris, and all the members
  of the SICoP for the opportunity to participate
  together in the building one of the first
  communities of practice in the federal government
  that is a public-private partnership. The author
  also expresses deep appreciation for the
  public-private partnership (IDEAlliance, MITRE,
  TopQuadrant, and Unicorn) that produced the
  Second Semantic Technologies for eGovernment
  Conference and the support that it received from
  many participants and vendors.

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Town Hall, Wednesday, 7-9 p.m.

• Networking of U.S. Federal Communities of
  Practice Using XML (6)
• (1) XML.Gov's ET.Gov for the CIO Council's
  Architecture Infrastructure Committee
• Owen Ambur, Co-Chair - update from last year's
  conference.
• (2) XML Authoring/Editing Forum, September 21,
  2004
• Betty Harvey, Forum Co-chair - how to plan an XML
  Conference using XML.
• (3) Army Knowledge Management Symposium, Semantic
  Web Track, August 30-September 3, 2004
• Rick Morris, SICoP Co-Chair support for the
  Armys Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS).

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Town Hall, Wednesday, 7-9 p.m.

• Networking of U.S. Federal Communities of
  Practice Using XML (continued)
• (4) Second Annual Semantic Technologies for E-Gov
  Conference,  September 8-9, 2004
• Brand Niemann, SICoP Co-Chair two-day
  conference with over 300 registered produced by a
  public-private partnership.
• (5) Intelligence Community Metadata Working
  Group
• Tim West, Chair xml-based metadata standards
  for the Intelligence Community and other national
  security communities of interest.
• (6) Joint XMLCoP - SiCoP Data and Information
  Reference Model XML Profile
• Mike Daconta, DHS Metadata Program Manager and
  Data Interoperability Team Lead for Executive
  Order 13356 update on DHS, DRM, and EO 13356.

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Exhibit

• Joint XML CoP/SICoP Exhibit 100
• Bill Kearney, Syndic8.com
• An RSS interface to the ET.gov submissions,
  thereby helping to fill in the missing piece of
  the prototype that Betty Harvey and Ken Sall put
  together for the XML 2003 conference
• http//Syndic8.com
• http//www.eccnet.com/ET-Register/
• Jim Rogers, Tucana Technologies
• The Tucana Knowledge Server to store and provide
  federated search and inference for the
  RSS/RDF/OWL artifacts.
• http//www.tucanatech.com
• Ralph Hodgson, TopQuadrant (in the Incubator
  Area)
• TopBraid, a multi-user environment for entering
  instance information into Semantic Web
  ontologies.
• Semantic Quiz, an extensible application that
  provides an open learning environment based on
  RDF and OWL.
• Government pilot for an FEA Capabilities and
  Reuse Manager.
• http//www.topquadrant.com

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Syndication of Feeds
Source Bill Kearney, Syndic8, November 5, 2004.
35
Semantic Knowledge Discovery
Source Tucana Knowledge Discovery Developer
Training, November 11-12, 2004.
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Semantic Knowledge Discovery
Source Tucana Knowledge Discovery Developer
Training, November 11-12, 2004.