GAO is not ready for XML
Patrick Thibodeau covers the recent report "Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language" by the GAO which was submitted to the Committee on Governmental Affairs headed by Joseph Lieberman. The PDF version of the report is here.
In a nutshell, the report says that standards for data exchange have not been created for many of the types of data the government needs to deal with. The report seems to call for the Office of Management and Budge and National Institute of Standards and Technology to create the standards needed by Federal (and other) agencies. Nice idea I suppose, but most XML data standards are being created by the people who are closest to the problem (not those furthest away from it). Further, the report suggests "adapting the EDI process to cover XML".
Although XML with namespaces is quite a bit more difficult to read than the original simple XML, it's still an order of magnitude easier to read than this blob of gunk, which is "Request for Quotation" formatted as an EDI message (from page 23 of the report).
ISA*00* *00* *ZZ*GATEC *ZZ*PUBLIC *960508*...
GS*RQ*GATEC*PUBLIC*960508*1237*000721330*X*003010
ST*840*000721331
BQT*00*F3360196T7174001*960508*106*960509
REF*IL*FM230061280242
PER*IC**EM*F33601@EC099.LLNL.GOV
DTM*002*960517
PO1*1*54*BX***FT*8940*SI*5499*FS*8940011728888*MF*SANDOZ ...
1*MF*SANDOZ NUTRITION*MG*NDE 00212-4580-01
PID*F****SUPPLEMENT, TOLEREX, DIETARY,
CTT*1
SE*16*000721331
GE*1*000721330
IEA*1*000721332
The report also looked at some of the agencies now using XML including teh SEC, Amtrak, DOJ, EPA and DOD. Finally, it includes some feedback from agencies which reviewed the report, including one by Lori Lisowski of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in which she argues for a "bottom up" approach to implementing XML in the government.
[via Doug Kaye]
4:08:30 PM 
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