|
By Mark Henricks
It's hard to share data without losing control of it, but a proposal by IDC Government Insights suggests that may be possible. The new research report proposes the use of a so-far theoretical concept called a Tagged Data Authority Engine (TDAE) as a way for government agencies to help assure the quality, accuracy and integrity of data shared with other agencies or fusion centers.
As envisioned by IDC analyst Shawn P. McCarthy, a TDAE would consist of a server to automate data cleansing, merging and updating across multiple networks. To support this, metadata files shipped along with the data would be expanded to include authority details for all data elements. A key element of the metadata would be the Internet location for the official version of each piece of data. A version check feature would call multiple data sources each time a file is opened, to make sure each item of data is up to date.
Realizing the vision will require a good deal of cooperation and coordination among government CIOs and agencies, first to establish common methods and resources, and then to develop solutions. McCarthy said that available tools could provide partial solutions. The paper describing the TDAE concept refers, for instance, to semantic Web technologies, Akamai Technologies' Content Distribution Model and the Internet DNS system as examples of existing technologies that could contribute.
Driving such an effort would be concern by CIOs over what happens to data after it leaves the generating agency to go to another agency or central fusion facility. While well-established versioning and other tools assure integrity of information in in-house databases, once data leaves the premises it can be significantly altered by being recalculated in spreadsheets, combined with other datasets and otherwise. McCarthy said CIOs are concerned that the data they are providing may, in some cases, be inaccurate or outdated by the time it's been massaged by other agencies and presented for public consumption.
McCarthy called on "a champion within federal or statewide CIO councils" to step forth to help start conversations about creating, standardizing and inserting the needed metadata elements into shared files. The task may not be as daunting as it sounds. Because currently available tools already solve portions of the problem, getting from today to TDAE might be less about new technology than managing a large project across multiple agencies.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
