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

Keywords: Web Services, Semantic Web, Interoperability, Integration, RDF, Ontology

Brand Niemann
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington
District of Columbia
United States of America
niemann.brand@epa.gov

Biography

Brand L. Niemann received his Ph.D. in Meteorology and Air Pollution Science from the University of Utah and has been with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 23 years and is currently a Computer Scientist and Semantic Web Services Specialist in the Office of Environmental Information. He lead a team that was recognized by OMB Associate Director for Information Technology and E-Government, Mark Forman, and the Quad Council with a Special Award for Innovation in the 2002 CIO Showcase of Excellence for their use of XML in a distributed content network and use of VoiceXML in providing universal access to emergency response information. During 2002-2003, he was chair of the CIO Council's (Architecture and Infrastructure Committee) XML Web Services Working Group ( http://web-services.gov ) which graduated recently to become the Emerging Technology Components Public-Private Partnership (http://componenttechnology.org ) of the Emerging Technology Subcommittee of the CIO Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee. He was recently recognized with the Emerging Technology / Standards Leadership Award at the SecureE-Biz.Net Summit, from Mark Forman, Associate Director, IT and eGovernment, OMB, and David McClure, VP e-Gov, Council for Excellence in Government: "for ushering in new technology to allow us to conduct e-Business securely to further implement the President's Management Agenda". He was recently asked to co-chair the CIO Council's (Best Practices Committee-Knowledge Management Working Group) Semantic (Web Services) Community of Practice ( http://web-services.gov and http://km.gov). He is a member of the EPA Enterprise Architecture Team and the XML 2004 Conference Planning Committee.

Abstract

Table of Contents

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

1. Background

This section contains major milestones, charter excerpts, and collaboration with other CoPs.

1.1 Major Milestones

The major milestones in the formation of the SICoP were as follows:

(1) The CIO Council’s 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 Council’s 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 ( http://Km.Gov ).

(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 (May 19 and June 23, 2004).

See Ken Sall’s paper at this conference for a more complete history of “How the US Federal Government is Using XML: One Year Later” .

1.2 SICoP 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.

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.

Figure 1 depicts the organizational relationships for semantic harmonization across the federal government.

Figure 1: Organizational Relationships

1.3 SICoP 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 Webber’s, July 5th, 2004, posting to the CIO Council’s 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.

If the government actually takes a moment and starts to look at what it really takes to make information exchanges of this nature - and I gave a short list of the top half-dozen features I see - then looks at XSD - remarkably XSD supports *none* of them!

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.”

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 Can’t Be Flexible When It Comes to Brittle”.)

SICoP is also collaborating with the Ontolog Forum by conducting a joint meeting on July 7, 2004 . 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. At this landmark event where members of both communities met face-to-face, for the first time, we discussed 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. 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.

2. Current Activities

This section contains member accomplishments and contours of practice, White Paper Modules, examples of Semantic Web Interoperability Markup, Second Annual Semantic Technologies for eGovenment Conference, SICoP at this Conference, and relationship to enterprise architecture and service-oriented architecture.

2.1 SICoP Member Accomplishments and Contours of Practice

Some SICoP member accomplishments are as follows:

(1) 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);

(2) 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;

(3) 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 15-19 ^th ; and

(4) Jeff Pollack and Ralph Hodgson, Adaptive Information – Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing & Enterprise Integration , Wiley-Interscience, September 2004.

SICoP is using Tomoye Simplify to produce the SICoP White Paper Modules (to be described below). The URL is http://12.158.152.7/ev_en.php and the Chief Editor, Guy Rogers, should be contacted for a password at grogers@triplei.com for participation in SICoP. The Semantic Interoperability Contours of the Practice being implemented in Tomoye Simplify are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Contours of Practice

2.2 SICoP White Paper Modules

The SICoP White Paper Modules & Their Team Leads are as follows:

Module 1: Introducing the Semantic Web Technologies: Harnessing the Power of Information Semantics, Jie-Hong Morrison

Module 2: Exploring the Business Value of Semantic Interoperability, Irene Polikoff

Module 3: Implementing the Semantic Web, Michael Daconta

The SICoP White Paper Module 1 Executive Summary was announcement and released jointly at the Army Knowledge Management Conference, August 31-September 2, 2004; and at the Second Semantic Technologies for eGovernment Conference , September 8-9, 2004. The title is “Introducing Semantic Web Technologies: Harnessing the Power of Information Semantics (“Semantic Primer”)” and was produced by the following SICoP Team:

Managing Editor and Module 1 Team Lead: Jie-Hong Morrison, Taxonomy and Search Engine Consultant, Computer Technologies Consulting, Inc.

Authors: Irene Polikoff, TopQuadrant, Inc. (SICoP White Paper Series Module 2 Team Lead); Ken Fromm, Loomia, Inc.; Leo Obrst, The MITRE Corporation.; Joram Borenstein, Unicorn Solutions, Inc.; Nancy G. Faget, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and Richard Murphy, Private Consultant.

Individuals who have contributed invaluable materials and insights: Mike Daconta, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (SICoP White Paper Series Module 3 Team Lead); Jeff Pollock, Network Inference, Inc.; Ralph Hodgson, TopQuadrant, Inc.; Norma Draper, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, Inc.; and Loren Osborn, Unicorn Solutions, Inc.

The Table of Contents is:

1.0 A story from EPA - “Is my child safe from environmental toxins?”

2.0 Information Semantics (see for example Figure 2 below)

3.0 The Semantic Web

4.0 What the Semantic Web Is and Is Not

5.0 Key Components of the Semantic Web

6.0 Harnessing the Power of Information Semantics through Semantic Web Technologies

7.0 References

Appendix A SICoP White Paper Series

Figure 3: Vision of Semantic Web

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), the later a member of SICoP, explains a key part of the Semantic Web, namely 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. RDF provides an XML-based language for writing such statements, using vocabularies based on Web Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) rather than on ordinary words. For example, in writing these statements in RDF, the URI http://usaf.example.mil/inventory#sn82735 might be used to identify the individual aircraft (this URI could be abbreviated as usaf:sn82735, using XML's namespace mechanism). Hence, corresponding RDF statements could be written as:

usaf:sn82735 rdf:type usaf:Aircraft
usaf:sn82735 usaf:needsPart usaf:part456

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 usaf:Aircraft or usaf:needsPart) 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:

Usaf:F15 rdfs:subClassOf usaf:Aircraft

so that, based on this declaration, an F15 could be properly interpreted, at least to some extent, by a program that doesn’t know about F15s, but does know about aircraft. 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 myOnt:altitude as distance over the earth’s surface (an ontology used by another organization might define anotherOnt:altitude as distance from the earth's center), or to state that myOnt:weight in kilograms = myOnt:weight * 2.2046 in pounds.

Web services are tied into this framework using a specialized ontology that describes the services more richly than conventional Web service description languages. The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program has developed one such ontology, called DAML-Services (DAML-S), which has evolved to OWL-S. This is an active research effort to develop a Web service ontology to use to describe the properties and capabilities of Web services in unambiguous, computer-interpretable form.

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 .

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.

Awards and Recognitions were given at the Second Semantic Technologies for E-Government Conference to and for:

(1) Best Paper Award to Brad Bebee, Mike Personick, Bryan Thompson, Bijan Parsia, and Curt Soechtig; and

(2) 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.

I measured the success this conference by the following:

(1) The effort it took to pry attendees away from the engaging discussions and new associations during the breaks to return to the sessions.

(2) The passionate discussion in the hallway near Track 1 that I had to ask to speak softer three times so it would not disturb Track 1!

(3) The fact that I think that most attendees would raise their hands if I asked if this face-to-face conference had increased their semantic interoperability at the highest level of human interaction and communication in that they better understood Semantic Technologies and the Semantic Web from what they had heard. (Most did raise their hands spontaneously without my actually asking them to!).

2.5 SICoP at 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.

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.

2.6 SICoP 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.

Another recent presentation at Enterprise Architecture 2004 Conference and Exhibition , September 21st, Session 3.5 entitled Best Practices for Adopting Service-Oriented Architectures provided a suggested roadmap to implementation and its relationship to our recent activities:

(1) Service Taxonomy-driven Enterprise Architecture and Communities of Practice: Joint Workshop on Multiple Taxonomies, April 28th, and National Infrastructure for Community Statistics CoP Initiative and Pilot Project Presentation, June 21st. Coordinate the CoP Organization, Web Site Design, and Network Nodes (see http://www.sdi.gov ).

(2) Federated Repository: Workshop on Software Component Development, Reuse, and Management, May 11th, and Federal Architects Council Meeting on SOA Concepts, the FEA, and Reuse Best Practices, June 16th.

(3) Semantic Interoperability: Joint Semantic Interoperability CoP/Ontolog Forum Meeting, July 7th, and Second Semantic Technologies for eGovenment Conference, September 8-9th.

3. Future Activities

The SICoP plans to continue Work on Semantic Interoperability in support of the following mandates and activities:

(1) The E-Gov Act of 2002;

(2) The Federal Enterprise Architecture’s Data & Information Reference Model (DRM);

(3) Selected Lines of Business (e.g., Data & Statistics and Federal Health Architecture);

(4) Individual E-Gov Initiatives and Agency Missions;

(5) White Paper Modules 2 and 3.

(6) Coordination and participation in the W3Cs Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group; and

(7) Plan for the Third Semantic Technologies for eGovernment Conference!

Acknowledgements

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