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United States Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program

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#########  Frequently Asked Questions

Enabler Business Cases

Updated: 2/15/03

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**Q: Are you proposing to centralize all Agency web sites?**

No. The enabler's business case teams are proposing the creation of a
shared tool-set that will facilitate managing, sharing, and delivering
information (web content, documents, and data). The toolset can be
applied to manage centralized web applications such as USDA.gov or it
could be deployed to manage internal agency web sites such as an
employee human resources portal or an agency document repository for
knowledge sharing. The flexibility of the design of the technical
architecture also takes advantage of existing hardware and resource
investments and offers an option to leverage those if the business
scenario is appropriate.

**Q: Is \"one size fits all\" going to work?**

We are not proposing a \"one size fits all" solution. The intent of the
enabler solutions is to address shared technology challenges (not
program delivery) using a common tool-set. For example, the process of
managing web content throughout its lifecycle (create, review, publish,
maintain, archive and delete) is common across all agencies regardless
of the agency's mission. Therefore, a shared web content management
solution will address most \-- if not all \-- needs associated with
managing web content.

**Q: Every agency has its own unique workflows and business processes.
How can you build enterprise-wide systems that address the different
agency business processes?**

The Web Content Management and Document management workflow capabilities
will allow agencies to author custom workflows into the applications
without having to customize the software. Although the underlying
solution is common for the agencies, using interfaces, the agencies will
be able to manage their users, workflows and data. In addition, if an
agency wants to customize the solution for their needs, they will be
allowed, but must work with the eGovernment team to do so to maintain
standards and consistency.

**Q: Is it technically feasible to host these services centrally?**

The proposed approach to deploy the enabler components is a distributed
one. Core components of the enabler suite will be housed across multiple
hosting facilities within and possibly outside of USDA. Additionally,
agency facilities will also play a key role in hosting components
especially those pertaining to development. A good example of this would
be web content management. Web content management is inherently one of
development as it deals with the creation and approval of web content.
Thus, the web content management software for an agency may reside on a
server local to the agency. Once the development and approval phase of
the web content is complete, a publish process within the web content
management tool would deploy the content to the distributed enterprise
servers or local agency web site.

An added flexibility offered by the enablers initiative is availability
of two types of hosting models: \"subscriber agency model\" and
\"hosting agency model\". The subscriber agency model is one that is
discussed above. A \"hosting agency model\" is one that offers more
flexibility where an agency would host its own instance of all the
enabler components. This paradigm would be more expensive and would
better suit larger agencies. The \"hosting agency model\" would allow
agencies more control over the physical components (servers) of the
enabler suite. Customization of the hosted components in the \"hosting
agency model\" will have to be restricted to ensure compatibility with
other instances of the components.

**Q: Where is the data stored?**

Documents, web content and data will be stored both on the enterprise
and agency levels. Drivers for where to physically store data will
mostly be agency preference, storage capacity, bandwidth, frequency of
use of data, relevance of data to other agencies, technical
practicality, etc.

**Q: How can the enablers be integrated with my Agency's backend
systems?**

One of the underlying technologies in the proposed enabler architecture
is Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). This component will be used
to integrate the different pieces of the enabler suite of solutions as
well as tie in agency applications. The EAI will be the preferred
approach of integration. However, depending on the specific business
scenarios, approaches such as FTP, HTTP, SQL DTS, database replication,
custom code via API etc may be used.

**Q: There has been significant investment by agencies on specific
platforms and solutions. Will a previous investment be \"throw away\" if
it is not in line with the selected path of enablers?**

The platform and software selection process will try to take into
account extent of current use of a given platform/software within USDA.
Although this will not be the only criterion, it will factor
significantly into the decision of the selected tool-set.

**Q: What benefits will my agency realize by participating?**

Below are some of the key value propositions to an agency:

-   **Obtain more value for every dollar of IT investment** -
    collaborative purchasing will allow an agency to purchase best of
    breed tools, which would have otherwise been very
    expensive/unaffordable to the agency

-   **Improve leverage over vendors** - the combined purchasing power of
    USDA has more weight in level of service from a software vendor as
    well as empowers USDA to influence modifications to the COTS package

-   **Enhance program delivery -** can expose more content and services
    to citizens in an intuitive manner

-   **Improve employee productivity -** reduced time spent on back
    office processes such as managing web sites and looking for
    documents

-   **Promote reuse of agency knowledge -** the enabling toolset will
    facilitate better sharing of knowledge (captured in documents,
    websites and databases) and reduce "recreating the wheel"

-   **Facilitate creation of new services through easier access to and
    combination of data sets**

**Q: What is a Taxonomy?**

A Taxonomy is a high level classification of the subject areas in the
Department.

**Q. What is a Thesaurus?**

A thesaurus is a specialized vocabulary of a particular field or fields.

**Q:** **What** **is the relationship of the USDA Taxonomy to
eGovernment, Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Federal EA Business
Reference Model?**

The federal architecture is critical in developing a departmental
taxonomy. Once we have a departmental structure in place, it
would/should tie neatly into a federal one. However USDA is currently
one of only a few departments considering or engaged in taxonomy
development.

Every subject, or groups of subjects within our subject field
\[agriculture\] want their own specialized subjects. The Taxonomy effort
must develop a specific methodology to create these more specific
taxonomies. Additionally USDA must develop taxonomies based on \"user
need\" rather than \"program need.\"

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