YEFI – Yesser Framework For Interoperability
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia INTEROPERABILITY FRAMEWORK Interoperability framework definition Interoperability framework importance
• Set of policies to be adopted by govern-
• If adopted, interoperability framework will
ment institutions that standardise the way
decrease the effort (time and cost) required
for developing the electronic exchange of
• Interoperability framework will define
institutions, required for successful e-government implementation
– Data types and schemas– Metadata element and dictionaries
• Shared, broadly adopted standards are the
key in ‘decentralised coordinated’approach, as proposed in National Action
DOCUMENT CONTENT Yesser Framework for Interoperability (YEFI) scope and general policies SCOPE OF THE FRAMEWORK
The interoperability framework covers the exchange of information and the interactions between• Saudi Arabian government and citizens
• Saudi Arabian government and foreign workers/expats with
• Saudi Arabian government and business within and outside
• Organization/ministries/institutes of the Saudi Arabian government
• Saudi Arabian government to other governments (in the future)
GENERAL POLICIES The selection of the technical policy should be Key general policies decided driven by
• Alignment with the internet –
• Interoperability – only specifications that are
relevant to systems interconnectivity, data
integration and service access are specified
the internet and world wide web for all information systems
• Market support – the specifications selected
are widely supported by the market in order to
• Browser as the key user
reduce cost and risk of the government systems
interface – all information are to be accessible through
• Scalability – the specifications selected have
the capacity to be scaled to satisfy changed
demands made on the systems (e.g., data vol-
ume, number of transactions, number of users)
• Openness – the specifications are documented
• International standards – preference will be
given to standards with the broadest remit
DOCUMENT CONTENT
Yesser Framework for Interoperability (YEFI) scope and general policies
YEFI components MAIN COMPONENTS FOR YEFI Elements Explanation standards
• Defines attributes to be used to ‘tag’
Metadata standards Technical standards A THE COMMON PART OF THE DATA ACROSS GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS NEED TO BE STANDARDIZED
• The data schema of the same business object is different
• This is a major hurdle for interconnectivity as the diversity
directly impacts the effort (cost and time) to establish intersystem connections
• In order to avoid that, the common parts of the different
schemas should be standardized for all system interfaces for inter-ministry connectivity
• Moreover metadata should be introduced as part of the schema
and schema versions should be recorded in a repository in order to achieve consistency under changing schemas
• A framework/process is proposed to achieve the appropriate
THE SCHEMA OF THE SAME BUSINESS OBJECT IS DIFFERENT ACROSS MINISTRIES
Example: The schema of a citizen across different ministries
Ministry of Health Ministry of Education Ministry of Interior Ministry of Labour Attribute Attribute Attribute Attribute Attribute Attribute Attribute Attribute type/format type/format type/format type/format Specific additional attributes the schemas
The common attributes have different names and types across ministries
A WITHOUT STANDARD THE INTERCONNECTIVITY EFFORT SCALES NON-LINEAR WITH THE NUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS The number of adaptors for the same business object scales non-linear* with the number of ministries Ministry A Ministry C
business object requires an individual adaptor for
Organization D
each ministry in order to convert names and types of the attributes
* N x (N -1) adapters are needed in this example, if N is the number of ministries
A BY STANDARDIZATION THE INTERCONNECTIVITY EFFORT SCALES ONLY LINEARLY WITH THE NUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS The number of adaptors scales only linear in case of standardization and encapsulation • A facade adaptor enables standardized interconnectivity
• There is only one facade adaptor per business object for
each ministry needed for all in- and outbound calls
Ministry A Ministry C
is needed for the common part of all shared business object across government institution in order to significantly reduce the interconnectivity effort
Organization D
effort should be done as part of the interface specification for the integration bus
* N adapters are needed in this example, if N is the number of ministries
A THE FIRST STEP TO DATA STANDARDIZATION IS CREATION OF A GOVERNMENT DATA CATALOG Government Data Catalogue: • Is a key element in developing schemas for business objects being exchanged, but also can be used by
government institutions to set up the standards to store the data
• Defines the standard for data on logical level, but not on the physical storage or display levels Data Catalogue content: Each data element described in catalogue should be defined through: • Name of data element • Business definition • Format i.e., sequence and meaning of alpha/
• Validation rules • Verification – business steps required to verify
• XML Schema ID – references to schema (or
• Values list of acceptable values (e.g., male,
• Default value (if any) • Owner of the standard • Version • Acceptance date A EXAMPLE FOR GOVERNMENT DATA CATALOG ENTRY Attribute
The date on which a person was born or is officially have been deemed to have been born
1. See Date definition2. Date must not be in the future. 3. Date must not be later than Person Death Date where held.
Level 0: no verificationLevel 1: verified with one of following documents: passport, national id, driver license
A DATA SCHEMA CONSIST OF DATA ELEMENTS OF TYPES DEFINED IN DATA CATALOG A DATA CONSISTENCY REQUIRES META DATA AS PART OF THE OBJECT DATA SCHEMA AND A CENTRAL SCHEMA REPOSITORY A central repository for the standardized schemas The standardized schema consists of is required to handle persistent data of outdated header and data body
Example: Attributes of the business object
Schemas will evolve over time. Hence there will be
persistent business objects of outdated schemas. In order to convert this object into the latest schema, the latest schema and conversion rules needs to be
Repository Business object with Business object outdated schema converted to the latest schema A A STANDARDIZATION PROCESS NEEDS TO BE ESTABLISHED AS PART OF THE INTEROPERABILITY EFFORT Develop standard Sign-off standard by Identify shared for common the government business objects attributes institutions Activities
standardization to all government institutions
Deliverables • Matrix of shared B METADATA STANDARDS What is metadata? “Data about data” Where it is important? Content management – describe the content of documents Why this is important
• Allow for easy access to information and documents
(e.g., searching, browsing by category) being published by different government institutions
What are typical
• Typically describe goal, origin, content and history of
metadata elements?
document, e.g., Addressee, Creator, Contributor, Date issued, Description, Format, Identifier, Language, Publisher, Copyright, Source/URL, Status, Subject, Title, TypeB CONTENT MANAGEMENT METADATA IN THE EXAMPLE Metadata Information
Outlines the Interoperability framework to be established in thee-Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Reserved to the Yesser Group, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
This metadata should be part of each documentation which is made available publicly or exchanged between government agencies
* Persistent identifiers shall conform to the ANSI/NISO Z39.84 standard http://www.niso.org/
C TECHNICAL POLICIES WILL CONSIST OF 3 SUBSECTIONS Technical subsections Description
• It specifies the integration approach, middleware
technologies and standards necessary to integrate the different applications in the different ministries
• It specifies network and transport protocols should be
used for information exchange, access, and delivery
• It specifies the security approaches, technologies,
and standards in the different e-government services
C IN ADDITION TO THE INTEGRATION STANDARDS A SYSTEM INTEGRATION STRATEGY NEEDS TO BE OUTLINED Key elements of an integration strategy Description
• The integration approach outlines two things along the
Integration approach
– The topology, e.g. point-to-point, hub-and spoke and bus– The architecture layer of integration, e.g. data, application layer
Specification of
• Specification of all technical standards relevant to the integration
technology
(see Appendix proposed technical standards)
standards
• Application integration: All interfaces/services to be Specification of
interconnected should be listed, specified and described in order
semantics
• Data integration: All major business objects/data to be
transmitted between systems across organization should be specified in order to achieve consistency**
* This should be part of the future application architecture** The specification and description of the business data should comply to metadata standards
DOCUMENT CONTENT
Yesser Framework for Interoperability (YEFI) scope and general policies
YEFI development roadmap TWO MAIN WORKSTREAMS TO BE LAUNCHED The goal of workstream Next steps metadata standards
define structures in which data is being exchanged
group’) to work on tags definition and dictionaries
Technical standards
groups, e.g., security sub group) to work on technical standards definition
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE INTEROPERABILITY Committee Interoperability Committee
changes of the inter-operability framework
All institutions relevant for e-government
Project leaders of projects which are relevant for inter-
THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS ENSURES THAT THE FRAMEWORK REMAINS UP TO DATE Lifecycle of the interoperability standards Requirement Decision on changes Roadmap and management to the standards compliance Activities • Review changes in the THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE SHOULD GROW OVER TIME
• Specifications of the most important • Further refinement within the
Organization
– 1 for the overall framework– 1 for each of the 5 technical area
DOCUMENT CONTENT
Yesser Framework for Interoperability (YEFI) scope and general policies
Appendix - Proposed technical standards GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR THE SPECIFICATION OF THE FIRST VERSION OF THE TECHNICAL STANDARDS Guiding principles • Outdated available standards should not be considered • All available standards which are not outdated and in
operations should be considered, e.g. Microsoft .NET, however gradual migration to a narrower set of preferred standards should be started
• All state-of-the-art standards should be considered even if
they are currently not in operations, e.g. JAR, WML
• Technology areas which do not have standards yet and are
not in use should not yet have standard policies, e.g. metadata management technology
• Localized standards should be taken into consideration, e.g.
INTEGRATION TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS Bold - preferred standard Resource Middleware WebService/ description technologies Character sets XML Technologies framework
• Data structure: XML
• Data format: XSL
• Web services
– UTF-16
– XML Schema CONTENT FORMATS Web content Document Compression Mobile device Image formats Audio formats Video formats technologies content formats
• XHTML INTERCONNECTION STANDARDS transport Directory protocols/ File transfer Mobile device WLAN network outbound protocols protocols services protocol network protocol protocols
• TCP/IP
• IGRP• BGP• IS-IS• SONET• X.25• DNS
SECURITY STANDARDS Encryption algorithm, Email security Transport protocol Network protocol digital signature
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