Domain: Information

The Information Domain addresses standards and guidelines for:

• Data Interoperability
• Data Management
• Data Formats
• Records Management (TBD)

A process-independent, enterprise view of government information enables data sharing
where appropriate within the bounds of security and privacy considerations. Service
oriented architectures promote information and service reuse through open standards.
To help the Commonwealth achieve the enormous benefits of information and service
reuse, the Information Domain emphasizes standards for data interoperability among
diverse internal and external platforms and applications. By promoting the ubiquitous use
of XML standards, the ETRM specifications insure that all new development initiatives
result in interoperable services that can be reused across the enterprise, as well as with
external business partners and governments where appropriate.
Given the level of complexity of integration projects, especially with multiple developers
and teams collaborating on the development of services, data models should be explicitly
visible to all architects, developers, and project managers as a coherent set of XML
schemas, in a Commonwealth Registry, and service development should be driven by
those schemas.

Initiatives such as Homeland Security rely upon all parties adhering to Community of
Interest XML specifications, defined by open standards bodies comprised of
representatives from Government, Business and Technology Communities. Open formats
for data files ensure that government records remain independent of underlying systems
and applications thereby preserving their accessibility over very long periods of time.