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Design Suggestions for EPA’s One Wiki in Support of the

EPA OGD Work GroupBrand Niemann

Senior Enterprise ArchitectUS EPA

February 4, 2010

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Overview

• 1. Background:– 1.1 Supporting EPA's Top Priorities– 1.2 An EPA EA Roadmap– 1.3 Solution Architecture 2010– 1.4 My List of Action Items– 1.5 EPA’s OGD Workgroup– 1.6 EPA’s New Social Media Policy

• 2. EPA’s One Wiki:– 2.1 Initial Impressions– 2.2 The Environment in Wikipedia– 2.3 Web 2.0 Whitepaper Pilot Wiki– 2.4 Information / Data Model– 2.5 Sheetster for Data.gov/semantic

• 3. Recommendations

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1.1 Supporting EPA's Top Priorities

• During the SES Conference, the Administrator also asked that we work as “One EPA” in finding ways to think and act in much broader, cross-organizational and collaborative ways. I fully support this vision and view it as the foundation of our work and the culture of OEI. I believe it is the nature of our business to embrace collaboration and the essence of our mission is to seek innovation. In closing, I am proud of your work, and appreciate your continued commitment to finding creative solutions and innovative ways to improve our day to day business.– Linda A.Travers, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office

of Environmental Information, Environmental Protection Agency, January 22, 2010, Email to All.

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1.2 An EPA EA Roadmap

What? Who? How? Clients

Compliance OMB Business-as-Usual

Segments, etc.

Solutions Program Offices & Regions

Reusable Component Services

Regions 4 & 7, etc.

Innovations Agency & Cross-Agency

Cloud Computing Desktop / Mobile Apps

Alternative analyses, etc.

Source: Brand Niemann, January 18, 2010.

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1.3 Solution Architecture 2010Activity Current Actions

EA Tools IMPART Pilot with Troux for Water

Implement Model-Driven Architecture

Enterprise Data Architecture

Recent Assessment

Implement Enterprise Data Architecture

Enterprise Tools

Recent Meetings

Implement Cloud Computing Desktop

Note: For methodology and results see http://semanticommunity.net

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1.4 My List of Action Items• Task 1: Work with Eric Marks (not an EPA contractor, but a member of our

federal cloud computing team) to get his Cloud Computing Reference Model into Troux (like the FEA E-Gov Module) so we can use it in IMPART to do Cost Alternative Analyses as required by OMB this year.

• Task 2: Update my Target Architecture 3.0 to includes Eric's Cloud Computing Reference Model and the Open Government Directive work I am doing for the Office of the Administrator / Office of Environmental Innovation and the CIOC Best Practices Committee in support of the recent Open Government Directive Workshop and CIOC Boot Camp Training, respectively.

• Task 3: Work to mentor others in becoming Solution Architects by creating a training module based on a SOA with web-services - reusable component services for each EPA Region (patterned after the current work for Regions 4 and 7) for the upcoming workshops in February and March. I already have tutorials of the Solution Architecture work that I have done for Region 4 and the two segments (Lisa and Vince). As we discussed, this interfaces with Kevin's work on Data Architecture using the four layer model (Information Architecture - topic and subtopic and Data Architecture - data table and data element).

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1.4 My List of Action Items

• I am hoping that all of this will help sell this to management - as we discussed in the planning session - the fact that I had already done so much of this and as our facilitator said "little or no new resources" would be needed! I have materials for each of these three tasks that would help us in doing that since I have been implementing SAs since I was selected to be a member of the original Federal SAWG (Solution Architects Working Group) by the first OMB Chief Architect, Bob Haycock, in 2002. Those solution architectures are all posted on the Web to be used and re-used.– See http://web-services.gov and http://semanticommunity.net

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1.5 EPA’s OGD Workgroup

• Meeting Agenda, January 28, 2010:– Welcome and Updates– Status of Key Actions

• OMB Open Government Meeting• Open Government Dashboard• Accomplishments• Open Government Web Site

– Plan and Wiki Demonstration– Next Steps

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1.5 EPA’s OGD Workgroup

• Meeting, January 28, 2010:– Comments and Followup:

• Lisa Schlosser – exceeds expectations and address Data.gov criticisms in the Washington Post (1)

• Pat Bonner – make this a more open and collaborative process (2)• Dalroy Ward – make this work on mobile devices (3)• David Eng – help with design on the EPA One Wiki (4)• Jeffrey Levy – EPA’s New Social Media Policy (5)• Andrea DiMaio (Member of Gartner Blog Network) - US EPA Social

Media Policy: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (6)• Tom Lee (Sunlight Foundation) – Data Quality Needs to be Tackled

on its Own (7)• Author – Why Not Integrate Your OGD Plan, Website, Dashboard,

and Data Publishing Like We Did in the EPA Web 2.0 Whitepaper and Subsequent Activities? (8)

• OMB – agencies need to move towards “self-actuating data sets” (9)

See next slide for explanation of footnotes.

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1.5 EPA’s OGD Workgroup• (1)

Info released under Obama transparency order is of little value, critics say, Washington Post, January 28, 2010.

• (2) EPA’s Public Involvement Policy (2003)• (3) Several recent emails with author.• (4) These slides for meeting on February 4, 2010.• (5) Guidance: Representing EPA Online Using Social Media, Jeffrey

Levy, January 29, 2010.• (6) US EPA Social Media Policy: One Step Forward, Two Steps

Back, Andrea DiMaio, January 29, 2010.• (7) Data Quality Needs to be Tackled on its Own, Tom Lee, January

28, 2010.• (8) EPA Web 2.0 Whitepaper, February 2008.• (9) Self-actuating data sets (e.g. RDF)

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1.6 EPA’s New Social Media Policy

• This policy seems to suggest that engagement in social media is only a part of communication strategy, and little else. But, as I said a while ago, engagement and communication are on a collision course. So what the EPA and other agencies also need is not a policy (codes of conduct and ethical programs usually suffice) but an engagement strategy based on letting employees engage by leveraging rather than fighting the unavoidable blurring of their personal and professional personas.– US EPA Social Media Policy: One Step Forward, Two

Steps Back, Andrea DiMaio, January 29, 2010.

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2. EPA’s One Wiki

https://kestrel.rtpnc.epa.gov/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

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2.1 Initial Impressions

• It won’t equal Wikipedia’s content and organization on the Environment, etc. so develop a strategy to link to Wikipedia and just post what is unique EPA content.

• The current interface is too busy/complicated.• There needs to be an Information / Data Model

for ease of use and standardization of content.• I suggest the pilot I did for the EPA Web 2.0

Whitepaper as an example to follow.

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2.2 The Environment in Wikipedia

http://epa.wik.is/Information_Classifications/Wikipedia

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2.2 The Environment in Wikipedia

• Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project with over 2,000,000 articles in English. There are two ways to look things up in Wikipedia: by searching or by browsing. Some initial browsing results of interest to EPA are as follows:– EPA – Environment or Environmental (see next slide)– Environmental Issues (16 topics and 70 subtopics)– Environment topics (alphabetical - being considered for deletion)– Environment Categories (38 subcategories and 136 pages)– Environmental organizations (article or section is incomplete)– Portal 

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2.2 The Environment in Wikipedia

• Wikipedia: Disambiguation:– When an article title could refer to several things, a disambiguation page

is needed. When the title usually means one thing but also has other meanings, add disambiguation links to the primary topic's article.

– Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving conflicts in article titles that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic, making that term likely to be the natural choice of title for more than one article. In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to the different article pages that could use essentially the same term as their title.

– For example, the word "Mercury" can refer to several different things, including: an element, a planet, an automobile brand, a record label, a NASA manned-spaceflight project, a plant, and a Roman god. Since only one Wikipedia page can have the generic name "Mercury", unambiguous article titles must be used for each of these topics: Mercury (element), Mercury (planet), Mercury (automobile), Mercury Records, Project Mercury, Mercury (plant), Mercury (mythology).

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2.3 Web 2.0 Whitepaper Pilot Wiki

http://epa.wik.is/

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2.4 Information / Data Model

• Information:– Topic– Subtopic– Sub-subtopic (if needed for document table of

contents)

• Data:– Data Table– Data Elements (metadata) (Note: This can be

combined / integrated with the Data Table)

See http://federaldata.wik.is/Statistical_Abstract_of_the_United_States:_2009

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2.4 Information / Data Model

http://epa.wik.is/Special:Sitemap

Site Map:Automatically Generated!Also Simplified Left-handPane for Ease-of-Navigation

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2.4 Information / Data Model

http://federaldata.wik.is/Statistical_Abstract_of_the_United_States:_2009/Section_1._Population/Tables/Table_1._Population_and_Area:_1790_to_2000

Standarized Metadata Elements:•Title•Headnote•Table•Symbol•Footnote•Source•For More Information

Integrated with the Data and Exposed as an RSS Feed and Web-Service!

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2.5 Sheetster for Data.gov/semantic

http://extentech.com/index.jsp

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2.5 Sheetster for Data.gov/semantic

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2.5 Sheetster for Data.gov/semantic

http://www.sheetster.com/nimbledocs/17331/2010/January/30/2008_population_(census_table_08s0001)

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3. Recommendations• We did an OGD-like Plan, February 2008:

– EPA Web 2.0 Whitepaper.• We did an OGD-like Plan Implementation, December 2007:

– EPA.wik.is MindTouch Deki Wiki, that evolved to a web-services platform, and now is an Internet operating system cloud desktop / mobile app store.

• We did a Data.gov/semantic –like Implementation (July 2008):– EPAontology.wik.is that used the EPA Report on the Environment

content (text, metadata, and spreadsheets).• We suggested this be done by individuals, December 2009:

– Semanticommunity.net suggested Putting Your Desktop in the Cloud in Support of the OGD and Data.gov/semantic.

• Now we are showing how this can be applied to the agency’s OGD Plan, Website, Dashboard, and Publication of Three Data Sets!– Integrate Your OGD Plan, Website, Dashboard, and Data Publishing.

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3. Recommendations

• Some specific examples:– Topic: http://epa.wik.is/Budget– Subtopic: http://epa.wik.is/Budget/4._Goals– Sub-subtopics:

http://epa.wik.is/Budget/4._Goals/4.1_Goal_1:_Clean_Air_and_Global_Climate_Change

– Etc.– Data Table:

http://epa.wik.is/Budget/5._Appendices/5.1_Summary_Resource_Tables/5.1.1_EPA’s_Resources_by_Appropriation

– Data Elements: Same as above but could be separate page with links from Data Element Column Names

• See Wikify Your Metadata:– http://www.mikeaxelrod.com/wp/2010/01/24/wikify-your-

metadata

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3. Recommendations• Now each page has metadata in the following ways:

– (1) Use of well-defined URLs (automatic, but requires some forethought and organization to take full advantage of):

• See http://federaldata.wik.is/@api/deki/files/130/=puiblic_sector_uri.pdf– (2) Use of comments at bottom of page (let others help you):

• See http://epa.wik.is/ at bottom of page– (3) Use of tags for each page (a little work)– (4) Use of a template for each page (e.g. Dublin Core!) (more work as

we all know)• Note: For Items (3) and (4) see:

– http://www.mindtouch.com/index.php?title=User_Manual/More/Tag_Page&highlight=tags and

– http://www.mindtouch.com/index.php?title=User_Manual/Tools/Templates&highlight=templates, respectively.

• Try a Google Search Like: epa wiki Collaboration Practitioners Network (EPA Wiki Budget is too new for Google to have indexed it yet - but try this in a week or less)