Senator Lundy describes her Public Sphere initiative

A ten minute video "Senator Lundy describes her Public Sphere initiative" is now available. This was made for my students at ANU studying Information Technology in Electronic Commerce COMP3410. For an assignment the students have to work out what metadata is appropriate to support such public discussions and to archive video used in policy making.

Public Sphere uses a mix of blogs, wikis, instant messaging, video and other tools, in different formats on different systems. This is fine for a pilot, but if this approach is to be used routinely for public policy making, then a system which allows easier set-up, use and archiving all of the material (perhaps for hundreds of years) is needed.

Government 2.0 Taskforce - Road Show starts consulting the public on 17 August in Canberra, followed by other locations around Australia, ending in Darwin on 2nd September 2009. The Taskforce has 15 experts chaired by Nicolas Gluin and was announced at Public Sphere 2 (Video & transcript available).

The open source XENA tool ("XML Electronic Normalising of Archives") which National Archives of Australia use can then be modified to convert discussions and video from public policy events into a long term storage formats.

Designing a course module in Metadata and Electronic Data Management - Part 3

Having the general direction for the course module on Metadata and Electronic Data Management, what should the students be able to do at the end of the IT in e-Commerce course? The numerous seminars on how to design courses I have attended over the last year have emphasised the importance of learning objectives and of assessment as part of the learning process. This is not just about setting a test at the end to see the students can remember things.

In order to prepare some Learning Outcomes, I did a web search for other courses on metadata and document management to see what they had. The first found was the University of Manchester's "COMP30352: Information Retrieval, Hypermedia and the Web", however this seems more of a web course. The second found was "IT in E Commerce COMP6341" at the ANU. It took me some moments to realise this was the course I was teaching. Someone had already written the learning outcomes:

Learning Outcomes:

The focus of this course is on document representation, knowledge discovery, storage and retrieval, and electronic trading. The areas covered include XML, XSL, DTD, metadata, data management and different forms of trading such as deliberative, spontaneous and auctions. Other topics will be included to match recent developments and maturation of the area, such as web application frameworks, web services and the semantic web Rationale Electronic Commerce is an area that is growing in leaps and bounds. The use of information technology is at the heart of electronic commerce. It is important that students doing a degree in Information Systems have a sound understanding of the role that information technology plays in electronic commerce. This course, along with the course on Internet, Intranet and Document Systems, is meant to do just that. It looks at some of the current and potential uses of information technology in electronic commerce. The topics covered include document representation in the form of XML, XSL, DTD's; knowledge discovery using metadata and data mining; data management as in the case of Digital Libraries and Electronic Document Management; trading, including deliberative, spontaneous and auctions; and security (public keys, PKI, digital signatures, etc). Other topics would be included as the area matures. It is anticipated that this course will be of interest to people in the industry as well.

This course is responsible for:

• current trends in representation of data and documents on the web
• knowledge discovery in the form of metadata and data mining
• database management in electronic commerce
• electronic trading
• security in electronic commerce.

The following topics will be addressed:

• knowledge representation - XML, XSL, DTD, CSS
• knowledge discovery - metadata and data mining.
• data management - digital libraries and electronic document management
• trading - deliberative, spontaneous and auctions
• security - public keys, symmetric keys, PKI, authentication, digital signatures, etc.

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to do the following:

1. Describe the XML language, write simple DTD's, write CSS style sheets for documents, and explain where XML can be applied to advantage and why.
   
2. Describe the use of metadata, and describe the current trends in data mining.
   
3. Describe how digital libraries and electronic document management work.
   
4. Describe the different kinds of trading that an individual, or an organisation, can do electronically. Explain the advantages and limitations of electronic trading, and the risks involved.
   
5. Explain why security is such a big issue in electronic commerce and how it is being addressed. Describe key concepts like public keys, symmetric keys, PKI, authentication and digital signatures. Given a system specification, come up with a design that allows secure transmission of information.

From: "IT in E Commerce COMP6341", Course Details, ANU, 2009

1. 
   

The last part which is of interest, saying what the student should be able to do on completion of the course:

Describe the XML language, write simple DTD's, write CSS style sheets for documents, and explain where XML can be applied to advantage and why.


Describe the use of metadata, and describe the current trends in data mining.


Describe how digital libraries and electronic document management work.


Describe the different kinds of trading that an individual, or an organisation, can do electronically. Explain the advantages and limitations of electronic trading, and the risks involved.


Explain why security is such a big issue in electronic commerce and how it is being addressed. Describe key concepts like public keys, symmetric keys, PKI, authentication and digital signatures. Given a system specification, come up with a design that allows secure transmission of information.

1. 
   

The wording of this is curiously loose, for example "...why security is such a big issue ...". Also use of the term "describe" seems too passive for a IT course, which should be about being able to do things, not just describe them.

Describe the XML language, write simple DTD's, write CSS style sheets for documents, and explain where XML can be applied to advantage and why.

Describe the use of metadata, and describe the current trends in data mining.

Describe how digital libraries and electronic document management work.

Describe the different kinds of trading that an individual, or an organisation, can do electronically. Explain the advantages and limitations of electronic trading, and the risks involved.

Explain why security is such a big issue in electronic commerce and how it is being addressed. Describe key concepts like public keys, symmetric keys, PKI, authentication and digital signatures. Given a system specification, come up with a design that allows secure transmission of information.

Extracting the items relating to metadata and electronic document management:

Describe the use of metadata ...

Describe how digital libraries and electronic document management work.

A better way to put this may be:

1. Use the XML language to define document strutures
2. Use XSLT to transform documents and CSS to present them
3. Use metadata to describe documents for use in digital libraries and electronic document management

In the course I previously spent a lot of time describing how e-publishing systems worked in general, and the history of publishing, to provide a context for XML based publishing. This is of little interest to current day students of IT, to whom paper publishing and library card catalogues are not part of their experience, having been born after e-publishing and computer catalogues had become the norm.

Also I spent a lot of time saying what was wrong with PDF. While there is still much wrong with PDF, there seems little point in spending time on that, when instead alternatives could be presented. Otherwise this is much like presenting what is wrong with private cars and roads to transport engineers.

Some other parts of the course can be emphasised. As an example the IFIP Digital Library which was speculated about last year has now become a reality, with the ANU providing the system for users around the globe. It is unlikely that students will have much interest or understanding of the idea that the material in the digital library was once available primarily on paper. They may also have difficulty making the connection between the digital library and the buildings on campus which are still called a library. The lower floors of these buildings have been cleared of most paper, to provide space for computer access, with perhaps a few serials and new books on display as historical curiosities.

Designing a course module in Metadata and Electronic Data Management - Part 2

Having worked out how much material is needed for a course module on Metadata and Electronic Data Management, what exactly is it for? The description of the IT in e-Commerce course refers to: "... document representation (XML, XSL, DTD, CSS), knowledge discovery (meta-data, information retrieval), data management (digital library, electronic document management), trading (spontaneous, deliberative, auctions) and security (encryption, public key, symmetric key, PKI, authentication, etc). ..."). So the course is about how to design e-documents, protect and manage them, so that they can be found and used for transactions in business.

The ANU is in Canberra, the seat of Australian Government and many students work for the government and so many of the examples in the course are drawn from government business. Also because some of the students go on the be academics and researchers, the example of academic publishing has been used as an example.

There are some common problems for people in business, government and academia: how do I create an e-document which will be flexible for use by different people at different times? How can it be kept? How can it be found? How can it be authenticated?

The problem with e-documents is coping with the volume of material. Workers are being overwhelmed with the volume of email and attachments. Just as they get used to e-mail, along comes blogs, wikis, twits and other technologies to cope with.

The course teaches the use of XML based technology. The idea is that you create the documents in a format which reflects the information content, separate from how the document will look to the reader. This goes beyond the separation of structure from presentation for web pages. With a HTML document, if you strip off the presentation layer, the document still looks like a text document. However, with XML data, with the data definitions removed, you have just a jumble of letters and numbers.

The key point in terms of knowledge discovery is metadata. The metadata can be used to find the data and also substitute for it in many processes. In the case of XML documents metadata is also used to define the data structure.

Students have considerable difficulty understanding what metadata is. The popularisation of metadata trough Tags on web resources, such as images, blog postings and instant messages, provides a useful example.

Previously I introduced metadata from the technical point of view and then illustrated it with popular examples such as Tags. Perhaps it might be to reverse this and introduce tags first.

In introducing electronic document management I went into considerable detail about the procedures used by the Australian Government. While this was popular with professional records managers and archivists, it was of little interest to IT students. It also seems a loosing battle in the government with such records management systems falling into disuse. While I can't solve the problems of the government by myself, perhaps I can suggest some different techniques to the students.

Deleting most of the material about records management procedures will make room for some new material on new electronic formats for use by business.

Designing a course module in Metadata and Electronic Data Management

How do I create a course module on "Metadata and Electronic Data Management"? This year I have again been asked to help teach students in the course Information Technology in Electronic Commerce (COMP3410) at ANU.

The content will be much the same as last year, but I would like to package the material up more neatly. This is partly prompted by my resolution last year that I had given my last lecture. Also the material currently lacks a coherent theme as is much longer than it should be. In addition I would like to revise some of the material which is based on old EDI standards and old Australian government records management guidelines.

How much?

But where to start? The first step is to get some idea of how much material is required. Previously I gave about five or six lectures and a lab covering the material. This equates to about two weeks of a course.

Last years notes for the course are the equivalent of 36 A4 pages, or about 18 pages per week. At one end of the spectrum my notes for Green ICT Strategies (COMP&310) are about 3 A4 pages per week, whereas the web technology lectures for COMP2410/6340 - Networked Information Systems are 24 pages per week. This range can be accounted for by the Green ICT course being at the masters level and assuming the student does more independent reading. Also the Green ICT notes are mostly English text, whereas the web technologies notes contact examples of code, which take up more space. So at 18 pages per week, the metadata and data management notes seem about right, but perhaps could be trimmed a little.

Where does it fit in the skill set?

The Metadata and Electronic Data Management materials was just whatever I thought might be relviant, when first presented in 2000. It was designed to fit with what else was included in the course and related courses, but no thought to how it fitted in the career of the people who were being trained.

To position the Green ICT Strategies course, the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) was used. A search of SFIA found only one Skill definition which mentioned metadata, which was Information management (IRMG) :

The overall management of information, as a fundamental business resource, to ensure that the information needs of the business are met. Encompasses development and promotion of the strategy and policies covering the design of information structures and taxonomies, the setting of policies for the sourcing and maintenance of the data content, the management and storage of electronic content and the analysis of information structure (including logical analysis of data and metadata). Includes overall responsibility for compliance with regulations, standards and codes of good practice relating to information and documentation records management, information assurance and data protection. ...

From: Information management (IRMG) , Strategy & planning, Information strategy, SFIA, Version 3, 2005

For the undergraduate version of the course this would be at SFIA level 4 and Level 5 for the postgraduate version. The higher SFIA level has more management and less technical responsibility.

A search of SFIA for "data management" turned up reference in Business analysis (ANAL), System software SYSP and Enterprise architecture STPL. None of these seem to fit with the intended content, the closes is business analysis, but that has too much business and not enough technology.

A search of SFIA for "records management" turned up the Information management (IRMG) skill again.

A search for "publishing" found Information content publishing ICPM, but this seems to relate more to web design.

So of all these Information management (IRMG) seems most relevant.

Metadata and data management for governance

Looking at the higher level, IM is in the SFIA Subcategory of Information strategy. This also includes the Corporate governance of IT (GOVN). At first glance governance does not seem relevant to metadata and data management, being more for a course on IT project management.

However, many of the examples I use to explain the uses of metadata and data management from government and involve the keeping of records for demonstrating that an organisation is being properly run. It occurred to me that it might be useful to turn around the emphasis on record keeping in case you are taken to court, to instead start by looking at what is needed in terms of electron communications and documents for running an organisation well at the highest level, that is governance. With this I could start off with the principles of governance and then show how to make effective use of tools like instant messaging and blogs in a corporate environment.