[Aust-NZ] GeoNetwork Annual Workshop [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au]

IMO:


Hello John,

Its great to hear from you. Thanks for the input.

Comments inline below...


<John.Weaver at ga.gov.au> wrote on 16/07/2008 05:18:55 PM:

> G’day Bruce and Others....,
> 
> I felt it appropriate to provide some details of metadata activities
> in general and GeoNetwork specifically from an OSDM perspective.
> 
> OSDM has been working with Software Improvements, a Canberra based 
> company who have been developing a version of the Australian Spatial
> Data Directory (ASDD) using GeoNetwork.  This is part of a pilot 
> project we are supporting for ANZLIC.  While there is a little way 
> to go before GeoNetwork is at a stage where it can provide an 
> improved capability and be more user friendly, progress is being 
> made.  Software Improvements have had some contact with Simon Pigot 
> in relation to this development effort.
> 
> From an ANZLIC perspective, the recent Council meeting closed the 
> ANZLIC metadata project and established an on-going ANZLIC discovery
> and access program.  OSDM has a role as lead agency in this program 
> and is working with a Steering Group consisting of Queensland, 
> Victoria, Western Australia, New Zealand and the ANZLIC Office.
> 
> In simple terms we are approaching this program on a number of 
> fronts.  The first is to provide a simple ANZLIC compliant metadata 
> entry tool and a metadata for dummies guide. 

Excellent!


Can you shed some more light on this please?

(I'm assuming that there will be a roadmap allowing this to be migrated to 
GeoNetwork in time.)



> An existing 
> application developed for a non-spatial area of Defence is being 
> investigated by the ANZLC Steering Committee.  This wizard based 
> tool is ISO19115 compliant and can provide XML outputs of the 
> Defence metadata profile.  It is not a management or query tool. 
> However, we believe that we can have an ANZLIC compliant version of 
> this in 2-3 months.  It will be freely available for anyone to 
> download from the OSDM web site, install and use.


Is this the MET tool above?




> 
> The second front is GeoNetwork and development of this capability. 
> OSDM is working with NCRIS and Rob Woodcock in relation to the 
> Spatial Information Services Stack (SISS), a component of which will
> consist of GeoNetwork development to meet identified user needs. 
> Our initial thoughts on this relate to ease of use and ease of 
> modification (due to limited documentation) and also the 
> significance of having an effective and usable ASDD.  At this stage 
> GeoNetwork it is not considered suitable to provide to agencies to 
> meet their enterprise metadata management needs, since the learning 
> curve is too steep.  I am hoping that the SISS activity will reduce 
> this burden.



With appropriate structure and resourcing, we should be able to turn this 
situation around. 

While Rob's team will be able to provide a great initial capability, I'm 
concerned
that other organisations will sit on their hands and expect others (or the 
mythical
Open Source Fairy!) to do the work. I sorry for being blunt, but this 
needs to be said.

We need to get a structure in place that allows us to work with the 
GeoNetwork Open Source
Community. We don't have to do all of this work ourselves. There is a 
world community out
there who want the same capabilities that we do. Taking a quick snapshot 
of current activities:

- NZ Dept of Defence is looking at integrating some work that will allow 
for
  (limited) automtic harvesting of metadata records from existing spatial
  data sets.

- The European Space Agency is currently funding development of ebRIM 
functionality
  within GeoNetwork.

If we were to start a structured process to address the issues that you 
have identified
and also that Jeroen and the GeoNetwork Developers identified at Bolsena, 
I think that we'll 
start seeing a number of organisations from around the world starting to 
help to fix the
underlying problems and quickly get the project on track.

For the Australian specific work, we should not just sit back and expect 
CSIRO to do all 
of the work. We as Managers, Developers, Architects etc should start 
looking at our budgets 
and projects (if we haven't already) to see what we can do. This is 
fundamental SDI
capability that we all just have to have.

If we all just invest a little, we'll be surprised by how much comes back.


Now having said that, just how different is the Australian Profile from 
ISO 19115 19139?



> 
> Further we see GeoNetwork operating at two slightly different 
> levels.  The first is the ASDD level and the second is at the 
> enterprise or agency level – two slightly different functions.
> 
> The challenge is trying to coordinate and prioritise these 
> development needs and also work with the open source community and 
> other GeoNetwork developers to reduce duplication of effort.  OSDM 
> has held a couple of ‘GeoNetwork’ meetings with the broader 
> community and would like to continue to play a role in coordination 
> of this activity, assuming the broader community agreed with this.
> 
> From a simplistic view point what I feel is required is a set of 
> development requirements to be established to meet both short and 
> longer term needs covering for ANZLIC, SISS and other users needs 
> and a mechanism to effectively coordinate the implementation of 
> these requirements by the relevant stakeholders together with a 
> mechanism to link this to the FAO efforts.



The problem is in assessing the requirements. Putting on my Architect's 
hat and
looking at the list of requirements from last September's workshop, I'd 
cull a number
of the requirements from GeoNetwork development. I don't believe they 
belong in
the product.

However, from an Australian / ANZLIC / SISS perspective we need to agree 
on the 
evaluation criteria.

This is also where having a member of the GeoNetwork Project Steering 
Committee helping
us to make the cull makes sense.

We can decide to push forward with feature X, but the GeoNetwork PSC may 
not want it in
the product.

We also need to work closely with the PSC when trying to work out 
strategic future 
directions? If we don't, we're wasting everyone's time.



> 
> OSDM is willing to play a community liaison role to help coordinate 
> these requirements and provide an interface to the developers, 
> especially SISS.
> 
> As a starting point OSDM would like to capture a list of user needs 
> and development requirements.  If you see the value in this, perhaps
> you can start to either document your needs/requirements or send us 
> any requirements or specification that you already have.  OSDM can 
> collate these to ‘discover’ any overlap or duplication. 
> 
> The results of this ‘collation’ of requirements can them be fed back
> to the developer and user communities with a view to maximising the 
> benefit for all.
> 


OSDM has been doing a good job of coordinating the various Government 
parties to date. 

The GeoNetwork workshop that I attended last September was most useful and 
was a credit 
to Ben and Jenny for organising.


I'll follow up on some specific suggestions off line.




> If all this comes together it might be a good starting point for the
> Annual Workshop as discussed below.
> 
> 
> I look forward to your comments on this. 
> 
> 
> John Weaver
> Manager, Office of Spatial Data Management
> Geoscience Australia
> 
> Post: GPO Box 378, Canberra ACT 2601
> Ph 6249 9590
> Email: john.weaver at osdm.gov.au
> 
> Web: www.osdm.gov.au
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: aust-nz-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:aust-nz-bounces at lists.
> osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au
> Sent: Wednesday, 16 July 2008 4:58 PM
> To: Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: [Aust-NZ] GeoNetwork Annual Workshop 
> 
> 
> IMO: 
> 
> 
> Ben, 
> 
> 
> Perhaps, once we have an idea where we are going with GeoNetwork and
> the ANZLIC Profile we could look at hosting the GeoNetwork Annual 
> Workshop in Australia? 
> 
> Bruce 
> 
> 
> > > <fron Jeroen>
> > > An annual workshop has been held every year, and such an event is 
the 
> > > place to discuss f2f the strategy for the coming years. Simon Pigot 
> > > and Kate Roberts attended that last year. For this year I am still 
not 
> > > sure how to organize it. I have to get some organization behind the 
> > > project to sponsor the event. Maybe FAO will do this, maybe there 
are 
> > > others.
> > > 
> > > On getting your priorities well covered in the project, I think that 
 
> > > there are no big issues. The project needs to take some steps to 
allow 
> > > for (a) plugable application profiles (b) plugable translation 
> > > packages (not to much of an issue for you :-) ) and (c) plugable 
skins/ 
> > > themes. All of these have been discussed and are in the process of 
> > > taking shape in a proposal. Some of the work is funded, some is 
> > > underfunded and some is not funded at all.
> > > 
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