"Functional Requirements for a Whole-of-Australian-Government Search Architecture", January 1998

Overview

Prepared by Tom Worthington

19 January 1998

Presented to: VALA98, 28 January 1998, RMIT Multimedia Database Systems Group, 26 March 1998, Melbourne, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University, 15 July 1998 & 24 July 1998, Sydney, Australian Oceanographic Data Centre

Notes

These are "slides", intended for display to an audience with an 18 point font on a 640 x 480 video display (or equivalent). Use the "<-Previous" and "Next->" links between slides.

This overview is based on "Functional Requirements for a Whole-of-Australian-Government Search Architecture", by the Search Engine Working Group (SEWG), January 1998. There are links from the slides to the corresponding sections of the report.

The slides were prepared by Tom Worthington, Department of Defence representative on the working group, for presentation to the VALA 1998 Biennial Conference. Use of the SEWG report is by permission of Warwick Cathro, NLA, convener of the SEWG.

1. Introduction
2. Origin of the Search Engine Working Group
3. Recommendations
4. Use of Public Search Engines
5. Business Issues
6. Functional Requirements: General Issues & Searching
7. Search Architecture, Agency layer & Advantages
8. Technical Issues

<-Previous Next->

Introduction

• on proposals for whole-of-government search services;
• take account of Online Council & the GTTC
• determine a consensus strategy; and
• report for Cw'th State Navigation Working Party
• Convened by Warwick Cathro, NLA, with 20 members
• Only three meetings (plus one Technical Subcommittee meeting); other work by e-mail list.

<-Previous Next->

Origin of the Search Engine Working Group

• IMSC recommended a single official Australian Government entry point in mid 1997
• Working Group on Government Information Navigation report in July 1997
• GTTC formed the Commonwealth State Navigation Working Party (CSNWP) to implement these reports
• The SEWG reports to the (CSNWP)
• There is also a Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) Working Group

<-Previous Next->

Recommendations

• short term: cooperative model with metadata & index data gathered in a shared index
• medium and long term: distributed model, with AGLS metadata in agency indexes
• Functional requirements: for Searching
• Policies for site indexing, registration, and interfaces
• Do a costing estimate and business case & RTF for:
  • a whole-of-Australian government search facility; and
  • search engines for individual agency sites.

<-Previous Next->

Use of Public Search Engines

• Australian Governments'' Entry Point is at the NLA
• Public search engines index this, however:
  • not all Australian government use the "gov.au" domain
  • information not in HTML will be missed
  • every page may not be indexed or not frequently
  • irrelevant information may be indexed
• Propose to fix this with a "whole of government" search capability, and metadata for the indexing of government information.

<-Previous Next->

Business Issues

• Definition of a 'Government' Site: Not just GOV.AU
• Variable Search Support Across Government: large sites (SCALEplus); subject entry points (ERIN & EdNA) V small sites
• Individual Agency Search Engines: assistance in the selection of search engines
• Metadata: embedded in document?, in repository?, use 'Dublin Core'?
• Resource Implications: tools from MetaWeb Project
• Transition Mechanism: staged implementation

<-Previous Next->

Functional Requirements - General Issues

• provided on the Internet, free;
• no need to know structure of Australian governments' to search;
• interface for lowest power browsers;
• flexible enough for future developments; and
• have a name

<-Previous Next->

Functional Requirements - Searching

• Scope: cross-jurisdiction, cross-agency and subject
• Data Elements: keywords & phrases of metadata
• Precision: Australian stopwords & phonetic searching
• Displaying Results: no upper limit, currency of indexing
• Data Formats: HTML, Text & captions on images
• Currency: weekly indexing & "index me now" feature
• Quality of the Data: registration & standards
• Language: multiple language interfaces
• Scalability: access databases with LDAP, X.500 & Z39.50
• Help Support: online help documentation

<-Previous Next->

Search Architecture

• Middle layer for distributed searching across multiple sites
• Provides a scalable architecture
• Filtering queries to specific search engines is problematic

<-Previous Next->

Search Architecture - Agency layer

<-Previous Next->

Search Architecture - Advantages

<-Previous Next->

Technical Issues

• Indexing currently carried out in different layers of the three-tier model
• shared approach may be appropriate in the short-term
• distributed approach relies on standards & software development
• three-tier architecture accommodates significant growth
• multilingual data an issue for data providers

<-Previous Next->

• "Functional Requirements for a Whole-of-Australian-Government Search Architecture", by the Search Engine Working Group (SEWG), January 1998
• Information Professions Working Together, VALA 1998 Biennial Conference, Wednesday 28 January 1998, Melbourne
• Implications Of The Internet For Government : Where To From Here?, Tom Worthington & Eric Wainwright, March 1997
• Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource, Preliminary Report of the Information Management Steering Committee, October 1996
• Architecture For Access To Government Information, Report of the IMSC -Technical Group, 25 July 1996
• Improving Electronic Document Management - Guidelines For Australian Government Agencies, IESC EDMSC, October 1995
• Managing electronic messages as records, Australian Archives, January 1997
• National Library of Australia
• Department of Defence
• Tom Worthington's home page

<-Previous Next->