1 SIF Interoperability Assessment Presented by Steve Browdy

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)2 Support for the SIF GEOSS Interoperability Assessment SIF Terms of Reference: –Purpose: The SIF provides advice, expertise and impartial guidance on issues relating to standards and interoperability for GEOSS. –Goal: The SIF’s goal is enabling ever greater degrees of interoperability among GEOSS components through facilitation, technical analysis, advocacy and education.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)3 Support for the SIF GEOSS Interoperability Assessment SIF Operating Procedures: –The SIF will monitor interoperability challenges, identify impediments to GEOSS objectives, … –The SIF will enhance and broaden the scope of applicability for interoperability arrangements that are registered to GEOSS. –The SIF will educate component contributors, and, as appropriate, data consumers and integrators, regarding GEOSS registered standards and the resources available to assist in using them. –SIF activities include monitoring relevant activities within GEO to determine whether there are impediments in the application of interoperability arrangements that are registered to GEOSS. –SIF activities include identifying organizations and individuals that can play a bridging function among GEOSS components and SBAs. –SIF activities include facilitating cooperation among the many organizations involved in selecting, developing and using diverse standards applicable to GEOSS.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)4 Components of SIF Interoperability Assessment GCI analysis Metrics for interoperability (within and outside GCI) Community outreach In performing this assessment, the SIF was looking for answers to the following main questions: –To what degree can the mechanisms for accessing data, and the data themselves, be considered interoperable? –Will the separate efforts by various communities, including Communities of Practice within GEO, to build their own portals, lead to fragmentation or synergy? –What communication, leadership, and outreach is needed with these and other communities to improve interoperability both within them and between them?

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)5 GCI Analysis It assumed that registered components and services are available and functioning properly. –Addressed by service testing facilities already mentioned. The analysis of the GCI was initially focused on collecting statistics from the SIR and CSR to look for any issues that could be identified as obstacles to interoperability. Clearinghouse, GWP, etc. will be handled during the ongoing assessment.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)6 GCI Analysis Associated Services 185 registered components in the CSR have no associated registered services. Many of these are catalogs that contain large amounts of metadata records for available community data. This seems very high, but could also indicate that much more focus should be on communities rather than individual data providers. Non-catalog components should have associated services (e.g. portals, datasets, etc.) Except for catalogs, components without services hampers interoperability.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)7 GCI Analysis Associated Standards Most services are only associated with a single standard. Multiple standards being associated is a good thing (data transfer, data format, quality, etc.) This is a registration issue. The limit of one associated primary standard prevents references to multiple versions and profiles of that standard being supported by the service. Components cannot now associate with standards. These issues certainly impede interoperability for the data users.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)8 GCI Analysis Standards Convergence

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)9 Metrics Currently, the GCI registry statistics referred to only deal with syntactic interoperability. Semantic interoperability and legal interoperability are also areas of future concern that need to be dealt with. Semantic interoperability can be measured, in some sense, by the number and types of taxonomies and ontologies being used. This translates into registered taxonomies and ontologies associated with services. The number of registered services engaged in semantic mediation and inference is also a measure of the state of evolution of GEOSS towards semantic interoperability.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)10 Metrics Legal interoperability has to do with the manner in which data can be used in an aggregate way in keeping with the data access and use conditions/restrictions attached to the data. One such definition of legal interoperability, provided by Harlan Onsrud is: “A functional environment in which: a) differing use conditions imposed on datasets drawn from multiple disparate sources are readily determinable, typically through automated means, with confidence; b) use conditions imposed on datasets do not disallow creation of derivative products that incorporate data carrying different use conditions; c) users may legally access and use the data of others without seeking permission on a case-by-case basis.” Legal interoperability ensures that the use and access conditions and restrictions imposed on data can be determined unambiguously.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)11 Metrics Metrics will be formulated for: –Ongoing monitoring –Evolutionary insight for GEOSS Metrics should be quantitative, if possible, and meaningful. Metrics for metrics-sake will do no good!

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)12 Community Outreach The community survey for this interoperability assessment is to: –Gauge the level of interoperability that communities have collectively achieved Human, syntactic, semantic, legal, etc. –Identify the interoperability impediments that communities face –Determine what the relationships are between the communities and the GEOSS.

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)13 Community Outreach Community survey has questions on: –GEOSS involvement –General interoperability –Syntactic interoperability –Semantic interoperability Legal interoperability was not addressed in the survey, since it is not used currently (as far as we are aware).

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)14 Community Outreach

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)15 Goals Understand current state of GEOSS interoperability –GCI –Communities Develop useful metrics for ongoing monitoring Be able to measure gaps using metrics Publish interoperability assessment white paper by end of March to mid-April –Provided to ADC –Target possible changes to the work plan Continue ongoing monitoring of metrics periodically

ADC Meeting (2011-FEB-28)16 Initial Recommendations Ensure that components registered in the CSR are associated with standards. Ensure that non-catalog type components registered in the CSR have associated services. Ensure that every service is associated with at least one standard. Allow multiple standards from a primary standards taxonomy category to be associated with services. Deploy a Best Practices Registry, to be integrated with the existing BPW, that can interoperate with the other GCI registries.