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IESR Progress Report, July 2003

Summary

  • Title of project: Information Environment Service Registry
  • Project Manager: Amanda Hill
  • Lead Institution: University of Manchester
  • Project Partners: UKOLN, University of Liverpool
  • Duration of Award: Nov 2002-Dec 2003
  • Period of Report: Feb 2003-Jul 2003

Confirmation Statement

I confirm that the project development is being conducted under the terms agreed in the initial contract with JISC.

Aims, Objectives and Methodology

A new scope document has been drawn up to reflect the current aims and objectives of the project. This is available at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/scope.html. The principle changes from the original scope document include the postponement of work on UDDI and limiting pilot phase contributors to those funded by the JISC.

Highlights, Outcomes and Important Findings from project

The report of the Stakeholder Analysis has been completed and is available on the IESR website at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/stakeholdrep.html. The majority of the replies to the stakeholder survey were very positive, with most respondents wanting to be kept informed about developments on the project and many willing to be involved in meetings.

The metadata format for IE Service Registry records has been devised and published (http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/metadata). Excel and XML templates for the input of data and examples have been made available for the early contributors to the registry.

A meeting for stakeholders of the project was held on 26 June, to present the metadata format to participants and to gather further feedback to the process of gathering user requirements for the service.

Changes to original award

The design of the Service Registry metadata format has taken longer than was originally estimated in the project plan, but this is not expected to have a major impact on the timing of the project.

Project staff

MIMAS

  • Amanda Hill (project manager)
  • Ann Apps (senior analyst)
  • Leigh Morris (developer)

UKOLN

  • Rachel Heery (user analysis, evaluation)
  • Andy Powell (technical specification)
  • Pete Johnston (technical specification)
  • Verity Brack (stakeholder analysis)
  • Amanda Closier (user analysis)

University of Liverpool

  • Paul Watry (Cheshire development)
  • Rob Sanderson (Cheshire development)

Involvement with Programme/Engagement with potential outcomes users

The stakeholder and user requirements work has involved the team in a great deal of contact with other JISC-funded Shared Services projects and stakeholders of the IESR.

16 May 2003: Workshop held jointly by National eScience Centre and UKOLN at the eScience Centre in Edinburgh. "Schemas and Ontologies: Building a Semantic Infrastructure for the GRID and Digital Libraries" Attended by Ann Apps, Rachel Heery and Pete Johnston. Rachel and Pete presented UKOLN work on metadata schemas and registries.

22-23 May 2003: the Portals and Shared Services Programme meeting at the University of Warwick was attended by several members of the project team. Amanda Hill gave a presentation on the IESR, while Andy Powell gave an overview of machine interfaces to shared services. Further details and links to the slides are at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=ie_meetings_portalsandsharedservices

18 June 2003: Ray Larson (of University of California - Berkeley) presented plans for the development of Cheshire 3 to some members of the project team at Manchester (Ann Apps, Amanda Hill)

A meeting for data providers, stakeholders and potential users of the Service Registry was held in Birmingham on 26 June 2003. 30 people attended, from a variety of stakeholders. Slides from the morning session and summaries of the discussions from the afternoon sessions may be found on the IESR website (http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/stakeholders/meeting_20030626)

14 July 2003: Matthew Dovey (of University of Oxford) presented information about UDDI to members of the project team at UKOLN (Amanda Closier, Rachel Heery, Pete Johnston, Andy Powell) and discussed a possible UDDI implementation for IESR.

18 July 2003: Members of the IESR team (Ann Apps, Pete Johnston, Leigh Morris and Amanda Hill) and other JISC projects benefited from a Web Services course held at Manchester Computing.

Publications and Publicity

The project website is at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/. This has been updated with a 'dissemination' section, which includes links to presentations made at the 26 June stakeholders' event and to the metadata pages. Information about the metadata was published on the site on 1 July. Further dissemination activities are described in the next section.

Detailed Progress and Future Plans

Work in this phase of the project has been concentrated in three main areas, each of which is described in more detail below:

1. IESR Metadata developments

  • Discussions concerning the technical specification have taken place on the project e-mail list and at two project meetings, held in March and June 2003.
  • Version 1.1 of the IESR metadata was published at the end of June 2003 (http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/metadata).
  • XML and Excel templates for the creation of metadata have been made available.
  • Examples of the metadata have also been created, as guidelines for contributors.
  • JISC have agreed funding for JISC service providers which will be providing metadata in the pilot phase. These are AHDS, EDINA, MIMAS, RDN, UK Data Archive and the UK Mirror Service. Records from these contributors have now started to arrive.

2. Stakeholder analysis

  • Replies from preliminary e-mails were analysed. A list of stakeholders was published on the website (http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/stakeholders.html) and their responses to the preliminary questionnaire were compiled into a report by Verity Brack. This was published in March 2003 at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/stakeholdrep.html. Responses to the survey were generally very positive, with the majority of stakeholders expressing a wish to be kept informed of progress on the project. A mailing list to facilitate communication with the stakeholders was established (iesr-stakeholders@jiscmail.ac.uk).
  • A follow-up questionnaire was sent out in April/May to interested parties, asking specific questions about user requirements for the Service Registry. Some of the key stakeholders identified during this process were then interviewed. A report summarising the user requirements will be available soon.

3. Dissemination

  • An e-mail list for stakeholders was established at iesr-stakeholders@jiscmail.ac.uk in April 2003 to enable communication between the project team and the project's stakeholders.
  • A talk on the IESR was given to the Portals and Shared Services meeting at Warwick on 22 May (slides at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=ie_meetings_portalsandsharedservices)
  • As mentioned above, a meeting to present the IESR metadata was held on 26 June 2003. Stakeholders were invited to the meeting, which was attended by 30 people
  • A helpdesk email address has been established at MIMAS (iesr@mimas.ac.uk). This forms a contact point for the early data contributors.

Next Stages

With the pilot project's metadata format now finalised, the main focus of work in the next reporting period (August - December 2003) will be the construction of the registry itself. A web-based input interface will be developed, as an alternative to the XML/Excel templates currently available for data contributors. The protocols which will be supported by the pilot Registry and the types of service that will be described have been published in the scope document at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/scope.html.

In August, data creation guidelines will be drawn up for the contributors: liaison with this group will be a significant area of work for the next phase of the project.

Amanda Hill, July 2003