legalxml-sc — archive

[James Cabral]

Monica and Robert, As you know,  I represented OASIS at the EDRM meeting last week in St. Paul, MN.  Here is a summary of what I learned. There are 9 project teams that make up EDRM: - Evergreen - a project incubator, currently developing education materials - Metrics – compiling a database of metrics to demonstrate improvements in efficiency, cost, etc. - Dataset & Testing (2 projects working together) – building a methodology for risk evaluation through verification and validation of e-discovery processes & technology (http://forensicfiles.org) - Information Governance – Collaboration w/ ARMA – mapped Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) to GARP, starting to map EDRM and IGRM - Jobs – framework for finding, hiring and maintaining staff, not yet a jobs bank - Search – guides for searching content at different points in EDRM workflow, looking into sampling and computer assisted review, deprecating previous search XML sub-team - Model Code of Conduct – defined ethical practices, now getting members to sign on to it - XML – developed 1.0 and 1.1 schema as alternative to proprietary de facto standard formats, developing 1.2 and 2.0 schema which will be more extensible While I introduced OASIS and LegalXML briefly to the whole group, I met primarily with the XML committee which included 4 attendees in person and 1 attendee on the phone.  Attendance and participation appear to be a major issue for most EDRM projects except the Search and Information Governance committees.  XML is easily the most technical project. 20+ EDRM members have demonstrated conformance with the 1.1 schema with a validation tool developed by the committee.  However, most service providers continue to use the legacy proprietary formats which are de facto standards (e.g. Summation, Concordance) rather than the EDRM XML.  The proprietary formats have a number of issues: - Very simple structures (basically CSV files) do not support multi-dimensional data well - Loose definitions result in miscommunication issues - No extensibility to add new features The EDRM 1.1 schema was intended to address these issues but did not support extensibility well.  Their previous design for the 2.0 schema was designed to be much more flexible but proved to be difficult to validate.  In the meetings, I was able to help them develop a new strategy for the 2.0 schema that takes advantage of schema validation while still supporting extensibility with generic data types.  I also encouraged them to leverage related work include Dublin Core, NIEM and the OASIS CMIS specification. They meet monthly by phone.  They plan to firm up the requirements and design for 2.0 in the next 2-3 months and hope to have a draft specification for the next EDRM face-to-face meeting in October. We spoke several times about possible synergies with OASIS.  The EDRM XML project seems to struggle with getting participation from people with expertise in creating XML schema - that would be a potential advantage to OASIS membership.  However, there was concerns that the schema is still not yet mature and ready for vetting in a standards process.  While they seem genuinely interest in eventually submitting their schema to OASIS, it is not an immediate priority for them. I plan to check in with them again closer to the October meeting to check on any developments. James E. Cabral Jr., Senior Manager MTG Management Consultants, L.L.C. 1111 Third Avenue, Suite 3010 Seattle, Washington 98101-3292 www.mtgmc.com (206) 442-5010 Phone (502) 509-4532 Mobile (206) 442-5011 Fax jcabral@mtgmc.com Helping our clients make a difference in the lives of the people they serve. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material.  If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.