DLC: FDSys, 3/31 p.m.

Mike Wash (MW), GPO CIO [slides]

what changed? – gpo reached agreement with harris to restructure the contract in mid-feb 2008. gpo has assumed overall program responsibilities and redefined Harris’ role.

why change? system design and development progress was falling behind expectations. gpo felt that their program mgmt experience was greater than that of harris. felt like it’d be a lower risk to take over more responsibility.

now what? gpo has overall program mgmt responsibility. has contracted subject matter experts to assist in system design activities and program support tasks. harris is providing software development resources. restructure team is proceeding to deliver the first release.

what subject matter expertise? (hired on contract); subjects include searching, what else? [see questions/answers below]

Salene Dalecky (SD) – program manager for fdsys

release development:

last summer – release 1b. prototype in break room

release 1c – first phase targeted for 2008 (3 phases altogether); subsequent releases every 6 months. 1c is first public release.

3rd phase – year later. allows electronic content submission

releases 2&3 will complete functionality. additional search, submission enhancements. style tools for content creation will be available.

harvesting and preservation will kick in

release 1c overview:

includes functionality of a public release – scaling the system infrastructure, enabling the submission of content to the system, building a digital repository that conforms to the oais reference model and enables the mgmt of content and metadata, providing modern search and access tools.

users will be able to select content collections, basic and advanced search. trying to make it comparable to existing, easy sites.

authorized gpo users will be able to monitor and refine search functionality. will allow indexing by search engines.

release ic, first phase:

manage content and metadata in content packages

exchange descriptive metadata between fdsys and ils [will be automated? sync between cataloging and metadata? hmm]

begin replacement of gpo access system and migration of existing content collections [top 25 collections on gpo access]; systems will be parallel until full functionality exists on fdsys. then gpo access [wais] will go away. will there be any other backup??

authentication will continue.

2nd phase (mid-2009):

enhance search and access functionality

provide congressional submission of content and jobs

assign persistent names (handles) to content

3rd phase: late 2009

- provide government agency submission of content and jobs

- provide a documented interface (api) to allow search by non-gpo systems

- continued access enhancements (enable navigation of relationships between publications, rss/email notifications)

detailed design review scheduled for mid-june 2008

developing key milestones and dates for release 1c. will work with SMEs on plan to engage stakeholders in the areas of usability, testing, and training

updated documentation on fdsys web site

Carrie Gibb:

communications update:

proof-of-concept demo given to more than 20 groups of stakeholders; participation in events held by industry leaders

also make demos available on fdsys site: http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys_status.htm

plan to begin using the fdsys blog more – in order to exchange ideas with stakeholders, etc.

email pmo@gpo.gov if you’re interested in participating in fdsys activities [focus groups, etc.]

questions from council:

- change in integrator function is pretty significant. has there been a substantial change in staffing? process of software acceptance – how are you doing that review? is it worth having an independent evaluator? what’s your recourse if …?

MW: have several different layers of software acceptance. on the development side, harris is responsible for designing own test plans and design validation testing. gpo is responsible for overall systems testing, user acceptance testing, and basic design testing ?(?); IT&S staff within gpo has a test organization that is responsible for writing overall systems test cases. program mgmt office will be writing user acceptance specs and beta testing. independent validation and verification testing will be auditing results of the test to make sure that all aspects have high integrity.

recourse: overall system responsibility is GPO’s. manage configuration & change mgmt w/in system, so that GPO has complete visibility into change requirements.

Chris Greer (CG): api: that piece will determine overall success of venture and partners – most important piece of venture. said it has search capability, but would imagine that various partners would want to mesh their deposition with your acquisition systems, that would use tools way beyond search. what are goals of api layer? role of partners (agencies and fdls) in process?

SD: refers to Lisa LaPlant, lead planner for access portion of FDsys. very involved with api.

LL: something slated for 3rd phase b/c we want to have the system foundation in place, other tools integrated before building out apis and connections. want to work with community to flesh out more api goals on public and agency sides. we started discussions w/some folks last summer in the library community and will continue to discuss.

CG: encourage careful discussion of goals and would like to further discuss this.

Peter Hemphill (PH): outreach efforts by gpo to various agencies, methods of communications. have you been able to gauge the level of commitment on behalf of agencies, willing to send information to gpo

Kirk Knoll (KK) – handles submission process. working very closely- interagency council for digital content submission. gone through system, sys requirements, asked what they want, if they’d willing to use. they’re pretty excited, and have been looking forward to this for a while.

PH: what about other agencies?

KK: carrie gibb has done more outreach to agencies & gotten positive feedbac.

Carrie Gibb: met with agencies across the U.S. disappointed that it’s still in progress; very excited about

PH: able to provide them advance materials so that they’re prepared to send?

CG: have provided overall information, done some beta testing.

SD: early on in Release 1C is congressionalsubmission, so that clerk and house and sec of senate have been working with gpo. feedback and work from congress is allowingfolks to learn more and apply lessons tofed agency partners.

PH: concerned about schedule if detailed design is [couldn't hear]
SD: in stage leading to detailed design review. move out of analysis and into design and development. have architecture and supporting materials necessary to move into phase 5. still very close to where we need to be to have a 2008 release. did have to change some releases of functionalities…

PH: concern that overall functionality –

GS: what necessitated change with harris?

MW: rfp process worked really well. other agencies have cited fdsys rfp as best practice. what prompted the change was the domain expertise required for this kind of system – better suited for internal program office. have also been watching other programs within federal gov’t that started out with master integrator approach – other agencies are starting to take a similar look – is this the right approach?

RFP – the more the gov’t can do to specify what they want to accomplish, the higher quality the responses. careful monitoring of gpo staff on progress of program led to conclusion that change was necessary.

John Shuler: will you be able to describe how this will impact the day-to-day operations of docs librarians?

SD: reference day-in-the-life presentations from previous conferences. update to that would be beneficial at this point – perhaps can put together. possibly something through the OPAL service, in order to get it out sooner than fall dlc.

CG: told us that changes don’t significantly affect timeline. what does this do to cost?

MW: we don’t believe that it will impact schedule because: started doing parallel design activities last fall, when beginning to question harris [fall-back approach]; allowed gpo to quickly get up to speed if we were to change tracks.

cost: believe that we’ll be in a favorable position on that. more custom code was part of the master integrator solution, different than the original approach gpo had counted on. custom code = more expensive. gpo went back to off-the-shelf vision with parallel programming, and took on more responsibility, so it looks like it might cost less.

Mary Alice Baish: outreach: haven’t mentioned the courts. what are your plans to communicate with them?

What kinds of subject experts have been contracted?: those familiar with some of these products: FAST search, usability, documentum, disaster recovery stuff, mitre organization [fed gov't company, programming, etc.] didn’t catch who else.

Barbie Selby: open access – how will this happen? api

me: exchange of metadata between fdsys and ils – how will that work?

Gil Baldwin: there is a workflow [high-level] in the requirements description. release 1c will have a two-way exchange of data, as opposed to the one-way ? in 1b. gil can show me exact location if i want.

[lost rest of q/a]