EM TC 04-03-03 Meeting Minutes

EM TC Face-to-Face Meeting Minutes
April 3rd, 2003
Arlington, VA

Attendees:
Allen Wyke - Chair
Rick Carlton - E Team (Co-Chair)
Cathy M Subatch - E Team (Secretary)
David Hall - Federal Support Systems
Gary Ham - DMI - Services
Eliot Christian - USGS
Steve Siegel - Ramsafe Technologies
Mike Walker - Blue 292
Steve Jepsen - Oracle
Art Botterell - Partnership for Public Warning
Jerry Weltman - Innovative Energy Management
Bill Riipii - MTG Management Consultants
Bona Nasution - MTG Management Consultants
Joyce Kern - SunGard
Mark Benemerito - SunGard
John Silva - SCS
Dave Danko - ESRI
Bill Schroeder - ESRI

On phone:
Jay Clark - Ship Analytics
Rex Brooks - Starbourne Communications Design
Kathleen Cover - SAP (Observer)
There were some other attendees from Blue 292 but I was unable to capture their names

Meeting Notes

First, a great big thank you for David Hall who hosted the meeting.  Thanks for the hospitality.  The location was perfect, close to the airport and the metro and the facilities worked out well.

Roll and Welcome
We did a roll and then Allen introduced the agenda and had a brief discussion on some past issues. 
He talked about the importance of what we are doing and the exposure we are getting. There is going to be a need to address our outreach responsibilities.  We need to know how to leverage without disruption.
The Requirements Document is posted on OASIS and will stay as a working draft until voted upon.
Decided that there would be three working sub-committees,  Emergency GIS, Infrastructure and Notification and Alert
Allen then introduced Matt Walton, who is the chairperson for the EM-XML Steering Committee.   Matt was in town and stopped by to give the TC a status on the Steering Committee.
Matt talked a bit about the EC and how that process works. This committee is an outreach group.  It conveys to other organizations/institutions what we are doing and encourages them to get involved.
It is based on an open, democratic process
There are no fees or dues
Helps frame policy issues around the technical work and helps to educate/proliferate based on that. 
Goal is to address the core issues of interoperability

Talked about   meeting with Steve Cooper (CIO) at DHS, so that he was aware of the work that   was underway by the EM XML Consortium. . Specifically, how it applied to   HSPD-5 (executive order to create NIMS - can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030228-9.html                                    ). Talked about the potential funding that may be left for 2003, but 2004 is much more flexible.  Also in that meeting was Tony Fraeder (head of e-gov), Norm Lorenz (CTO, Federal Government), Mark Zimmerman and Gary Ham (DHS) and Allen Wyke.  We may be able to use them for testing.
There was then a dicussion about testing for what the EM TC develops.
Rex mentioned that NIST supports testing and we could look into using them.
Allen: comment on funding and how that works within OASIS and Rex noted that OASIS can help find money. NIST might be a good way to put money in that doesn't feel like the government is controlling the standards. 
Eliot said that NIST can be extremely costly. 
Allen took the action item to look into NIST and see if it is a viable solution for us
The next item on the agenda was the reports from the subcommitte

Infrastructure Subcommittee
Rick: forgot a copy   of his charter, so let's all make fun of Rick :) That aside, he wants to work   on create a standard that defines the deployable EM applications...the overall   infrastructure. (www.lists.oasis-open.org/archives/emergency/200303/msg00034.html                                ). Possible to use RDF to describe this. (All subcommittee charters are available on the EM TC list on OASIS).  The name change was due to the fact that Garyhad concerns about openness of our standard.  Need to address some sort of infrastructure to adapt. Rick notes that this wasn't considered when the original charter was done by Rick and Allen.
Eliot: mentions that egov TC Infrastruture committee and talks through a document/definition he had for infrastructure - set of utilities used across all functions.  Is independent of technical services.  Rick noted that this was similar to what he wanted to do but still needed to be flushed out.  Still have the issue on how to bind the public and private sector.  Also that this was an opportunity for us to build the first iteration of NIMS (from Presidential Directive #5)
Allen: question if what he envisioned an RDF of functions, objects, etc. that define an IEM application.  Rick: create a bag that moves and changes.
Rex - keep aware of standards that work globally
Bona - asked a question we always need to keep in mind during work - who are we targeting as an audience. Allen response to vendors and others that need to leverage a common way to interoperate. That emergency and incident management has a very broad scope.
Art - we must resist the temptation to standardize what we do not understand, which was a very good point. Points to OASIS process that it must be shown to work (aka reference implementations) before it is dubbed a standard.
Rick summarized by saying the point of the group is "adapted infrastructure," that they will do research on what is out there, see commonalities and recommend components for the overall standard
Alerting/Notification SC
Art: went over the draft charter (www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/emergency/email/archives/200304/msg00002.html         ) -  the name of the group is now Notification, Methods and Messaging.  It is responsible for procedures and formats for the exchanging new and updated information related to Public Safety and Homeland Security. 
Allen: question if the way it was described in a too broad of a way. Art clarifies that new and updated focuses that on the delta (change in) data. Agreed. 
Eliot: should we have natural and man-made as a generic way? Art makes a note to try and clarify.  He also mentioned that there is a need now for this format, and can we offer it now. Allen goes over OASIS process (Working Draft, Community Specification, OASIS Standard) that needs to be followed. We do not want to compromise the quality of what we do, just to do stuff fast. 
David asked if the subcommitte gets to to data level and Allen responded that this is tangible.  He also noted that we need to be disciplined on who we are and what problem we are solving.
Gary mentioned that Mark Forman and his past experiences and how we need to be careful to not create another "tower of XML" such as TaxXML.
Eliot - how does this subcommittee relate to the TC?  Allen responded that it works within the scope of the TC.  Release of working draft, the people can start using (create a feedback loop).
Conclusion: SC needs to create advisory note to groups that are already working on this to tell them what we are doing and advise them to wait. At the same time, work on moving CAP spec into official OASIS Working Draft and point people to using that – with the full understanding it is in a Working Draft state. 
Art gave brief description of the CAP group for those unfamiliar with it.  It is an adhoc working group open to all.  We can use the working group as part of our public review process.  The CAP working group was started about 1 1/2 years ago as an adhoc effort to define emergency management for the internet.  It focuses on definition of common alerting protocol.  Has recruited organizations to do field trials but is all very informal.  The EM TC can use CAP as a point of departure.
GIS SC
Bill/Eliot: looking for input from the group. Did not have a charter to present.  Anyone who has  use cases for geospatial data should share
Eliot:   there may be an educational perspective – that might be what is really needed.   Bill noted that there were white papers they could share with the   group. Dan suggested that the SC could develop use cases and requirements and then find standards that overlay or fit.
Allen: determining how GIS fit in was the reason the SC was created. Most of the members of the TC didn't have the experience to define the test cases, although we fully respective and are aware the role GIS plays in the TC.  
Bill:   really wants use cases to drive work.  Dan noted that there are   existing standards that need to be explained.  Geospatial part comes up   with data model of what emergency management is and what GIS is.  Need to   ensure that the rest of the technical committee handles this right.   
Gary - other subcommittees to identify functional   need and how GIS is applied. Also mentioned notion of NIMS.  
Rick - Very specific and applied point of contact but need to   know what to apply to.  NIMS is driven by ICS, doesn't it make sense to   adopt?
After a bit more   discussion the SC reached the conclusion: collapsing in on threemain things that drive what the charter should be within the group.
Educational
Advice to other SC's
Stay on top of other needs/efforts

Allen: maybe we should have called this the GIS exploratory committee.

ISO 11179 Presentation (Experience with Data Elements: ISO 11179
John Silva: general lesson's learned presentation on 11179 within the National Cancer Institute project – needed to create CDE (Common Data Elements). Could be very costly to do, yet if there is funding available – this would be good. First step was to agree upon a common data element exchange.  The purpose of ISO 11179 was to provide a starting point for data elements: 
  
identifying
  
defining
  
registering
  
classifying
  
managing
  
standardization
  
integration

Gary                                     - do we want to run a registry?  Costs and benefits can be defined.Dan thought registry would be a better follow on after we complete initial scope of work.
John said we need to find a way to get funded.  May need to exploit data elements.  Eliot - maybe we can take a stand on registries/repositories (e-gov).  Right now OASIS is depending upon ebXML.  Gary can the government sponsor the registry.  US government running many trials including Justice, FAA, Census and EPA. Eliot - e-Gov won't endorse.  John said that CommerceNet defines business processes.  They may be interested in assisting.
Allen: based on experience, any thoughts on how to best utilize ISO 11179? Response is that if we plan on using a lot of other standards (aka referencing and leveraging them), then there might be a good use for it. However, this might be more of an OASIS thing to manage. 
Art: Can you make any recommendations on some of the things we should consider as we work on our standards? Response: naming conventions. And use as guidance.
Presentation will be posted to EM TC OASIS site.
Breakouts
Due to time constraints Allen decided to skip the liaison and outreach sectionof the agenda.  He will work with each subcommitte chair to identify the groups they need to liaison with.  Each subcommittee will provide their own relevant notes to be published.  After the breakouts, each subcommittee chair gave a brief summary of their individual meetings.  For those members not in attendance at the meeting, please select a breakout group that you would like to belong to and email the chairperson.

Infrastructure
Members include:
Rick Carlton - chair ()
Steve Siegel - RAMSafe
Gary Ham - DHS
Mark Benemerito - SunGard
Allen Wyke

The group agreed to rename the subcommitte to EM Infrastructure Framework  The scope of work: Currently, there exists a problem in choosing the appropriate set of individual standards to achieve a particular emergency function or capability. For instance, what components are currently available and are they valid in the context of an interoperable emergency management system? 
The EM Infrastructure Framework subcommittee is a horizontal effort that will cross multiple standards and is therefore an EM Metadata Standard. This subcommittee will research, analyze,  recommend, and organize a series of infrastructure components in order to bind various standards providing connectivity between systems.   Rick will review eGov before finalizing deliverables. 
Notifications, Methods and Messaging
Members include:
Art Boterell - Chair ()
Joyce Kern - SunGard
Bosa Naustion - MTG
                   John Silva - SCS

Art reported that the committee didn't change scope. Deliverables will include:
  
puruse standardization of a common alerting protocol (maybe   based on work done by CAP)
  
standardize a subset of ICS forms 
  
develop implementation of incident notification   format

GIS
               Members include:

Eliot Christian - Co-chair ()

Bill Schroeder - Co-chair ()

Dan Danko - ESRI

Mike Walker - Blue292

Eliot reported that the GIS subcommittee has three goals:
  
GIS advice/educational
  
Geospatial input from the TC
  
Targeted outreach

ESRI is going to submit some symbology work. 

Additional Notes
A rather large use case would be NIMS. SARS is another potential use case. Could involve a UDDI (or other) type of registry. Should consider multiple "views", such as an ICS view of these components. Deliverables will follow after Rick can review eGov. 

Discussion on when/how subcommittees to meet.  Was suggestion to replace weekly TC meeting with subcommittee meetings.  Gary suggested that we have a half hour TC meeting followed by an hour subcommittee meeting.  To be further discussed and finalized at next teleconference call on Tuesday, April 8.

Allen Special thanx to David Hall for hosting the face-to-face, and to Cathy Subatch who helped ensure we had the proper sugar and caffeine to keep us awake and energized for 7 hours. 
Action Items
Allen - post Cooper presentation to TC member page
Allen - work to create budget for proposal to submit to Cooper
Allen/Cathy - create one page description about EM-XML Consortium
Allen/Rick/Eliot - Investigate how NIST works (to use for certification).  Will it be too costly or will benefit outweigh  
Allen - liaison with e-Gov interoperability subcommittee  
Allen/Art - work on how to get CAP and OASIS to work together  
Allen - review 	  OASIS documentation guidelines and templates. Forward a copy to group. Need to start creating a Guidelines document that tells the outside world how we build standards (i.e., details that are more granular than the basic OASIS templates, such as potential WAI support).  
Membership - select subcommittee to work on (if not at   face-to-face meeting).  Review charters and send email to appropriate   subcommittee chair.  
Allen - talk with OASIS   and get their thoughts on ISO 11179 as well as research in general terms for   group. John, Eliot, and Gary	                         to help.  
John Silva - post ISO 11179 presentation to OASIS EM TC site  
Allen - think about how to best utilize the   "normal" meeting time. Talk with people at OASIS.   
Eliot/Rex - draft Advisory Note for vote by TC  
Rick - review e-Gov infrastructure 	    charter/document and compare it to what he had in mind, and then make a recommendation as to next steps.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be Tuesday, April 8th at 1:00pm EST/10am PST

Dial in: 1.800.453.7412      Access Code: 604776

Cathy M. Subatch
E Team Inc.
818.932.0660 x248
310.770.6885 (mobile)