AGLS The State of the Union

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AGLS The State of the Union

• Adrian Cunningham
• National Archives of Australia

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This Talk Will Cover

• What is AGLS?
• What has changed since 1998?
• What has been achieved?
• What still needs to be done?
• The future?

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AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT LOCATOR SERVICE (AGLS)
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The Objectives of AGLS

• To improve the visibility and accessibility of
  government information and services through the
  standardisation of Web-based descriptions
• To enable Web-based search engines to do their
  job with greater precision and efficiency
• To help ensure that those searching the Web are
  presented with relevant and meaningful hits in
  response to search requests

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AGLS and Dublin Core

• AGLS is based on, but extends, the international
  Dublin Core metadata standard (ISO 15836)
• Importance of interoperability between AGLS and
  Dublin Core
• AGLS can itself be extended for specific purposes

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4 Additional AGLS Elements

• Function
• Describes the function/s of government to which
  the resource relates
• Availability
• Provides information on how offline resources may
  be obtained
• Mandate (Legislative mandate for the resource)
• Audience
• Describes the target audience of the resource

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AGLS is Simple, Flexible and Dynamic

• Only 6 of the 19 elements are mandatory
• AGLS metadata can be created at point of document
  creation, but can be added to and improved as
  documents evolve
• AGLS metadata can be linked to single items or to
  aggregates of resources
• Users can chose how much structure they want
  what syntax they want to use (HTML or XML)

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Issues in 1998 (1)

• Road testing the new standard
• Encouraging implementation, getting endorsements
  and mandates
• Software tools and support
• Integration of metadata deployment and reuse in
  agencies
• Business cases and returns on investment

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Issues in 1998 (2)

• Training
• Subject, function and other schemes
• Syntax issues (HTML, XML, RDF)
• Where to store and how to harvest the metadata
• Keeping in step with the directions of DCMI
• Search engine support

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Progress since 1998

• Version 1.1, March 1999 added 2 new elements
  (Audience and Mandate), plus new qualifiers
• Version 1.2, August 2000
• Version 1.3, December 2002/AS 5044
• AGLS moves beyond the public sector
• New 2-part structure (Element set and Usage Guide)

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Implementations since 1998

• Endorsed by the Online Council
• Mandated in Tasmania and South Australia
• Cwealth GovOnline Mandate, April 2000
• Commonwealth Implementation Manual
• Cwealth application guidelines, April 2000
• Version 1.0, July 2001 (inc. service description
  guidelines)
• Version 1.1, December 2002
• Victorian Online Gateway Project, 2002/03
• Local governments getting started

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Other Developments Since 1998

• New Zealands adoption of NZGLS
• Portals strategy reliance on metadata BEP,
  HealthInsite, etc
• AGLS very visible within DCMI internationally
• AGLS logo as a registered trademark
• NAAs compliance assessment service for the
  Commonwealth, April 2000-Oct 2002
• Over 100 websites assessed as compliant

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More developments since 1998

• Numerous training courses
• AGIFT issued for nationally consistent
  classification of resources by function
• AGLS encoding schemes and register of schemes
• XML schemas issued
• Software tools like MetaBrowser
• XML Harvest Control Lists (Cwealth)

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AGLS now involves cooperation between

• THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
• THE NATIONAL OFFICE FOR THE INFORMATION
  ECONOMYAGIMO
• ONLINE COUNCIL OFFICIALS
• AGLS WORKING GROUP
• STANDARDS AUSTRALIA

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Agencies Determine Their Own AGLS Policies and
Procedures

• Agencies will make business choices about
• which resources to metadata ( retrofitting)
• how much metadata will be created
• when the metadata will be created
• who will be responsible for metadata creation
• what metadata tools will be utilised
• where the metadata will be stored and how it will
  be accessed

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Metadata Deployment and Business Processes

• AGLS - start with collection-level metadata
• Over your intranet use metadata authoring or
  generating tools such as MetaEdit or MetaBrowser
• Is your search engine metadata-enabled?
• Decide who will create the metadata
• Then tackle retrofitting at item level
• Set in place procedures for new resources

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Outstanding Issues for AGLS

• Search engine capabilities
• Quality assurance and self-assessment bad
  metadata is worse than no metadata
• Integration of metadata creation and management
  with business processes and business systems
• Securing/maintaining whole-of-jurisdiction
  support for metadata deployment
• Demonstrating the business case for investing in
  metadata
• Distributed harvesting options -OAI

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The Future

• The best strategy is for as much standardised
  metadata as possible to be automatically captured
  in business systems
• Metadata can then be automatically reused and
  value-added for multiple purposes, such as
  resource discovery in a Web or intranet
  environment
• Need for integrated systems for reusable
  business-critical metadata
• AGLS will continue to evolve

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Metadata Resources

• AGLS http//www.naa.gov.au/agls/
• NAA Recordkeeping Metadata Standard
  naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/control/rkms/summary.htm
  
• Monash Uni SPIRT framework http//www.sims.mona
  sh.edu.au/research/rcrg/