Develop identification and validation

processes for emerging technologies

POC Name: John McManus

Phone: [deleted]

Organization: AIC Emerging Technologies Subcommittee Co-chair

Place of Performance: Washington DC, Contractor Site

1.0 BACKGROUND

The Federal Government lacks a clear and open process to support the identification and validation of Emerging Technologies that support the President’s e-government goals, allows for submissions from commercial entities (vs. Government entities), provides a market mechanism to bring together component supply and demand as well as Communities of Practice (CoP), and supports the “graduation” of these technologies into the Federal marketplace (Core.gov).

A process is needed that provides emerging technology vendors with a primary point of entry to the Federal IT community and that promotes information sharing about these technologies across Federal agencies.

The Emerging Technology Subcommittee of the CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee is charged with examining cross-cutting emerging technology components and developing recommendations for their use in the Federal Government. The Subcommittee has been tasked with defining a process that will allow the IT innovation life-cycle to be managed on a Government-wide basis, and to accelerate the discovery, validation, and maturation of Federal Enterprise Architecture components that improve Federal performance and the delivery of citizen services while reducing aggregate costs through the promotion of component integration and reuse versus bespoke development.

It is expected that such a process will lead to better-coordinated and more productive response to submissions of components in support of the eGov initiatives and within the framework of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). The desired outcome is the well-coordinated availability of logically separable technology components for potential Government-wide usage that utilizes a sustainable, self-supporting process for the technical assessment of emerging technologies.

2.0 PURPOSE

The purpose of this task will be Stage 1 of the process described in the U.S. CIO Council document titled “Managing the IT Innovation Life-Cycle: Proposed Stages/Schemas” of May 27, 2003. Stage 1 is known as the “Identification” stage, in which vendors, integrators, and other organizations (known as “submitters” in this document) can identify and “nominate” a proposed component merely be providing the required information in the form of an XML instance document, as specified by a group of XML schemas (known as “component XML schemas” in this document).

The XML instance document containing the component information would be stored on the submitter’s own Web site at a given URL. This URL - along with additional information regarding the component - would be registered through the use of a Web form with a site known as “ET.gov”. Both the Web form and the ET.gov site are to be created as part of this task. Selected metadata will then be “indexed” for each registered component at ET.gov, thereby enabling efficient discovery of available components through their metadata properties be Federal agency representatives. Full-text search will also be available.

We envision a relationship between the overall proposed process and CORE.gov. We envision that ET.gov will accept submissions from the vendor/integrator community while CORE.gov will focus on submissions from the federal community, and that a component will graduate from ET.gov to CORE.gov once a sufficient level of subscription and commitment to the component exists within the federal community based on the CoPs. However, defining this relationship formally will be out of scope of this task, as it will require integration with stages beyond Stage 1.

3.0 TASK OBJECTIVES

The Stage 1 process will involve the following Major Tasks:

1. Establishment of ET.gov Web site
2. Creation of submitter documentation, forms and process
3. Enhancement of Proposed processes (if necessary)
4. Finalization of component XML schemas

Each of these tasks is described in general terms below, and more specifically in Section 4.

Task 1 - Establishment of ET.gov Web site: We will establish the “ET.gov” Web site and install all associated hardware. This site will be hosted at GSA on the same servers that support XML.gov. This will involve the creation of static and dynamic web pages, creation and configuration of a database to store information and the establishment of the ET.Gov brand, user interface, and site navigation. We will also create the Web form that submitters will use to register the ET components, based on the component XML schemas and we will create the Web form that Federal agents will use to browse and discover the component registry to search for new/existing components that meet specific requirements. We intend to develop ET.Gov in conjunction with the Emerging Technology Subcommittee, to ensure that it meets the Subcommittee’s needs.

Task 2 - Creation of submitter documentation: We will create the necessary documentation to help submitters create their component XML instance documents and register their components on the ET.gov Web site.

Task 3 - Enhancement of proposed process (if necessary): We will work with the ET Subcommittee to review the proposed process, and determine if any enhancements are required. If enhancements are required, we will work with the ET Subcommittee to enhance the proposed process as necessary.

Task 4 - Finalization of component XML schemas: We will work with the ET Subcommittee to finalize the current component XML schemas. This may involve adding additional XML artifacts to the XML schemas to represent additional component metadata.

4.0 TASK ACTIVITIES, AND WORK PRODUCTS

This section describes the activities and work products for each task listed in Section 3. It is assumed that all infrastructure requirements (e.g. server, database product, etc.) are already in place and available at GSA and therefore will not be included in this document.

Task	Activity	Work Product
Task 1: Establishment of ET.gov Web site	Create ET.gov site	ET.gov site
	Create draft ET component registration Web form with search index	N/A
	Review draft ET component registration Web form with ET Subcommittee and enhance as necessary	N/A
	Deliver final ET component registration Web form with search index	ET component registration Web form with index
Task 2: Creation of submitter documentation	Create draft submitter documentation	N/A
	Review draft submitter documentation with ET Subcommittee and enhance as necessary	N/A
	Deliver final submitter documentation	Submitter documentation
Task 3: Enhancement of proposed process (if necessary)	Review proposed Stage 1 process with ET Subcommittee and enhance as necessary	N/A
	Release final Stage 1 process	Finalized Stage 1 process
Task 4 - Finalization of component XML schemas	Review existing component XML schemas with ET Subcommittee and determine required enhancements	N/A
	Enhance component XML schemas and review with ET Subcommittee	N/A
	Deliver finalized component XML Schemas	Finalized component XML schemas

The supporting assumptions for the task are noted below.

1. Contractor will work with the Emerging Technologies Subcommittee to identify a hosting facility for ET.Gov.
2. ET.Gov will be responsible for the purchasing of all hardware, software, hosting fees, and licensing related to this task.
3. ET.Gov performance criteria will be measured against 100 concurrent users.
4. All requests outside the scope of work within this document will require additional time and funding.
5. The Emerging Technologies Subcommittee will provide the Contractor with the necessary content for the ET.Gov website.
6. The Contractor will have timely access to the subject matter experts to support the verification and validation of ET.Gov and newly created content.

5.0 PERIOD AND PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

The period of performance is September 1, 2004 – December 1, 2004. The place of performance is in Washington DC at the contractor’s site.