A Worldwide Web of Intentions, Stakeholders, and Results
Definition & Purposes | Current Work & Results - Schema, Forms & Documents | Protoype Services | History | See Also
- Facilitate the sharing, referencing, indexing, discovery, linking, reuse, and analyses of the elements of strategic plans, including goal and objective statements as well as the names and descriptions of stakeholder groups and any other content commonly included in strategic plans.
- Enable the concept of "strategic alignment" to be realized in literal linkages among goal and objective statements and all other records created by organizations in the routine course of their business processes.
- Facilitate the discovery of potential performance partners who share common goals and objectives and/or either produce inputs needed or require outputs produced by the organization compiling the strategic plan.
- Facilitate stakeholder feedback on strategic goals and objectives.
- Facilitate updating and maintenance of discrete elements of strategic plans without requiring review and approval of the entire plan through bureaucratic channels, thereby helping to make the strategic planning process more agile and responsive to stakeholder feedback and changing circumstances, thus helping to overcome the tendency of strategic plans to become outdated "shelfware".
- Reduce the needless time, effort, inconsistencies, and delays associated with maintaining data redundantly in myriad "stovepipe" systems rather than referencing the authoritative sources.
- Enable agencies to comply with the provisions of subsections
202(b)(4) & (5)
and 207(d)
of the eGov Act, which respectively require agencies to:
- Work together to link their performance goals to key groups, including citizens, businesses, and other governments, as well as internal Federal Government operations; and
- Adopt open standards (e.g., StratML) enabling the organization and categorization of Government information in a way that is searchable electronically and interoperably across agencies.
Note: On January 4, 2011, President Obama signed H.R. 2142, the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), into law as P.L. 111-352. Section 2 requires agencies to publish their strategic plans on their websites and section 10 requires them to publish their strategic and performance plans and reports in searchable, machine-readable format. StratML is such a format.
StratML Part 2 extends Part 1 to include the basic, minumum additional elements required for performance plans and reports, including stakeholder roles and performance indicators.
StratML Part 3 will specify additional elements addressing the data requirements implicit in GPRAMA and perhaps additional purposes as well, e.g., geospatial referencing.
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StratML Commmittee (SMLC) Performance Plan for 2013
- May 23 meeting agenda & minutes & action items from February 7 meeting -- Note: We did not achieve a quorum for our February 28 meeting.
- NIEM profile files posted by Sylvia Webb on January 17
- Latest draft schema for StratML Part 3 as of November 16, 2012
- Data dictionary for StratML Part 3 compiled by Art Colman, November 4, 2012
- Screen shots showing how the Part 3 schema appears in an InfoPath form, November 23, 2012
- The data requirements implicit in the GPRA Modernization Act (GPRAMA) are a central focus of Part 3.
- Proposed mapping of OMB Circular A-11, Section 210, guidance to the elements of StratML Part 3
- Proposed mapping of the elements of the Performance Data Standard (PDS) for the Performance.gov site to StratML Part 3.
- This rendion of GPRAMA, dated February 7, 2012, contains selected screen shots from an InfoPath form showing how requirements of the Act might be met in the strawman draft schema for Part 3 - HTML | PDF
- Some of the elements that are candidates for consideration in Part 3 include the following:
- Geospatial referencing of organizations, goals, objectives, and stakeholders
- Gannon Dick's thoughts on "encoded resources" (e.g., country codes), February 7, 2010
- Citation of relevant legal or other authorities
- Categorization of goals, objectives & performance indicators under various taxonomies, such as:
- The four "measurement areas" set forth in the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Performance Reference Model (PRM)
- The three-tiered taxonomy of "business functions" set forth in the FEA Business Reference Model (BRM)
- The three-tiered taxonomy of Themes and Budget Functions set forth in the data dictionary for the Performance.gov site
- The four facets of Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorcard
- Owen Ambur has begun testing a schema fragment for documenting multi-layer taxonomies, e.g., the Themes and Budget Functions incorported in the Performance.gov site. See this example.
- Organizational relationships, such as those set forth in OMG's Organization Structure Metamodel (OSM) and/or Dave Reynolds' organizational ontology; and/or the business schema being developed by the Freebase community
- A generic <Relationship> element enabling any element within StratML documents to be related to any other element by referencing its <Identifier>
- Note: StratML Part 2 includes the Relationship element as a child of PerformanceIndicator to enable users to link inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes to each other in the ValueChain, if they wish
- Point of contact elements as children of the Stakeholder element to enable automated transmission of input and feedback to designated points of contact for each Goal and Objective
- Personal attributes of individuals and groups of Stakeholders
- Version control at the element level, perhaps by applying a time/date element or attribute
- Subjective (qualitative) ratings and weightings of performance as alternatives when quantitative metrics are not feasible, as provided by GPRAMA and OPM's SES Performance Management System (SESPMS).
- Referencing of <Project>s and <Program>s and perhaps also Systems and Investments
- See, for example, Project Management XML Schema (PMXML) & the data model for program evalutions in ExpectMore.gov
- Application of the <Identifier> element at the root (plan/report) level.
- Strategy formulation frameworks and/or methods
- Core Competency and Value Proposition
- See also Andre Cusson's proposals
- The schema is available at http://www.aiim.org/documents/StratML_Schemas/StrategicPlan.xsd and http://xml.gov/stratml/references/StrategicPlan.xsd.
- AIIM is pursuing its establishment as an international (ISO) standard. The StratML project has been registered at ISO and assigned number ISO/NP 17469-1.
- Responses to comments on StratML Part 1 posted to the ISO/TC 171/SC 2 eCommittee by Betsy Fanning, May 8, 2012.
- Five nations -- Canada, South Africa, China, and Korea in addition to the U.S. -- agreed to work on the international standard.
- The schema is available at http://www.aiim.org/documents/StratML_Schemas/PerformancePlanOrReport.xsd and http://xml.gov/stratml/references/PerformancePlanOrReport20101215.xsd.
- Here are some test/use cases for StratML Part 2:
- StratML Commmittee (SMLC) Performance Plan/Report
- 2012 - with Styling
- 2011 - Plain XML text & with Styling
- The Government Accountability Office's (GAO) FY 2009 Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) in StratML Part 2 format - Plain XML text & with Styling
- ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT ACT: Agencies Have Implemented Most Provisions, but Key Areas of Attention Remain, GAO-12-782 -- Report to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, in StratML Part 2 format - with Styling
- The U.S. Merit System Protection Board's (MSPB) FY 2010 Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) in StratML Part 2 format with Styling
- The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) FY 2010 Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) in StratML Part 2 format - Plain XML text (with InfoPath processing instruction) & with Styling
- The CIOC/AIC's Emerging Technology Subcommittee's (ETS) charter in StratML Part 2 format - Plain XML text (with InfoPath processing instruction) & with Styling
- Department of Labor (DOL) FY 2009 Performance Budget Overview in StratML Part 2 format - Plain XML text & with Styling
- CIOC Architecture and Infrastructure Committee (AIC) Work Plan 2011-2012 - Plain XML text & with Styling
- Executive Order - Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government (EOEEAG) - Plain XML text & with Styling
- Cato Reports
- Publication Practices for Transparent Government: Rating the Congress (PPTGRC) - Plain XML text & with Styling
- Government Spending Transparency: "Needs Improvement" Is Understatement (GST) - Plain XML text & with Styling
- Grading the Government's Data Publication Practices (GGDPP) - with Styling
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - Plain XML text & with Styling
-
AIIM Integrated System Development (ISD) Committee -
with Styling
- Previous plan - Plain XML text & with Styling
- Network of European Stakeholders for Enhance User Centricity in eGovernance (NET-EUCEN), Network Policy White Paper - Plain XML text & with Styling
- OPM's SES Performance Management System (SESPMS) - Plain XML text & with Styling
- DRAFT Federal IT Shared Services Strategy (FITSSS) - Plain XML text & with Styling
- City of Edmonton (CoE) - with Styling
- Charity Navigator's Effectiveness & Results (CNER) Dashboard - with Styling
- America's Failing Infrastructure: A Scary Picture (AFIASP), Kiplinger - with Styling
- THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP: GOVERNMENT SELF-ASSESSMENT REPORT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, March 29, 2013 (OGP-USNAP20130329) - with Styling
- Note: The link to the schema for Part 1 was temporarily lost when AIIM transitioned to a new CMS. It has now been restored and is available directly at http://www.aiim.org/documents/StratML_Schemas/StrategicPlan.xsd A copy is also available at http://xml.gov/stratml/references/StrategicPlan.xsd
- The schema for Part 2 is available directly at http://www.aiim.org/documents/StratML_Schemas/PerformancePlanOrReport.xsd and a copy is available at http://xml.gov/stratml/references/PerformancePlanOrReport.xsd
- See also the listings of forms and prototypical services below.
The next StratML Committee teleconference is scheduled for Thursday, May 23, at 11:00 EDST.
The Committee is nearing completion of its discussion of proposed extensions to include in Part 3, as outlined below.
StratML Part 1, Strategic Plans, was approved as an American national standard, ANSI/AIIM 21:2009
StratML Part 2, Perfomance Plans and Reports, was approved as an American national standard on August 8, 2011, and has been published as ANSI/AIIM 22:2011.
The official namespace for StratML is http://stratml.net, where the schemas for both Parts 1 and 2 should be available. The URL at which AIIM actually maintains the schemas and to which the stratml.net domain should redirect is http://www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/Standards/StratML_Schemas.
StratML Glossary compiled by Owen Ambur using this XSD and stylesheet
A registry of StratML products and services is being maintained on AIIM's site
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During the development, piloting, proof-of-concept phase, more than 1100 strategic plans, containing more than 20,000 objectives & 14,000 stakeholders, have been rendered in StratML Part 1 format, using (thus far) seven different authoring/conversion tools, including:
- Microsoft InfoPath forms for StratML Part 1, Strategic Plans & Part 2, Performance Plans and Reports
- For those who do not have InfoPath, screen shots of those forms are available in PDF - Part 1 & Part 2.
- Athough StratML Part 3, Additional Elements, has not yet been approved as an ANSI standard or AIIM best practice, Owen Ambur has created a prototypical InfoPath form for it that can be used as a reference implementation.
- For those who do not have InfoPath, screen shots of the Part 3 form, as of November 16, 2012, are available in PDF.
- Business Web Software (now Firmstep) AchieveForms using the form on their demonstration site (Seems to have been taken down.)
- PDF Fillable form for Part 1
- When he was with Adobe, Duane Nickull expressed his intent to develop a PDF Fillable form for StratML Part 2.
- Xopus form for Part 1 (available in Spanish as well as English.)
- Microsoft Word - See the StratML Quick Start Guide for MS Word Users compiled by Ictect
- Joe Carmel's XForms form for Part 1 - See his About StratML XForms page
- Andre Cusson of 01 Communications is working on an XForms form and sub-forms for StratML Part 2. Andre's form was derived from but extends Joe's form. Whereas Joe's form can be used to create and edit StratML Part 1 files, Andre's can be used to create either Part 1 or Part 2 files. However, unlike Joe's form, Andre's form creates valid Part 2 files even if the Part 1 option is used. That means the information needed for performance plans and reports can subsequently be added without having to tranform the Part 1 files.
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The most current and complete listing of plans in the StratML collection is available at http://xml.fido.gov/stratml/drybridge/index.htm.
- Andre Cusson of 01Communications has developed a StratML portal, including a StratML statistics page and a hyperlinked listings of stakeholders & values
- He has also provided a stylesheet that works with both StratML Part 1 and Part 2 files.
- He is working on an XForms form and sub-forms for StratML Part 2. Clicking on the button at the top toggles from a StratML Part 1, Strategic Plan, form to a Part 2, Performance Plan or Report, form and vice versa. The Part 2 form displays the Stakeholder Role and Performance Indicator elements, whereas the Part 1 form does not. See his documentation of his XForms efforts and particularly the documentation for his Part 2 form.
- See also his draft MS Word template for StratML Part 2.
- For information on his StratML-related efforts, see this page on his DNAOS site.
- oXygen XML Editor version 14.0 supports StratML.
- StratML framework available as open source project on githup
- Since StratML documents are plain text (XML) documents posted on the public Web, they are readily available for indexing by the search engines, like Google, albeit on an uncertain schedule. Thus, the major search engine indices may not contain the most recent submissions.
- Matt MacKenzie and Duane Nickull of Uberity quickly developed and briefly hosted a JSON/MongoDB-based StratML indexing/browsing/query service at http://uberity.com/stratml/.
- Joe Carmel's StratML demos:
- StratML Cataloging Tool Using AJAX -- Indexes files in the URL listing by Internet domain, provides count of StratML files, identifies those lacking sources, and those whose URLs are incorrect in the listing.
- Sortable tabular listings of goals, values and stakeholders identified in plans in the StratML collection. Click on the column headings to sort in ascending or descending alphabetical order. Note: Subsections 202(b)(4) & (5) of the eGov Act require agencies to work together to link their performance goals to key groups and use information technology in delivering government information and services to those groups.
- Atom Protocol demos displaying the <Mission> and <Vision> statements and showing how many times each <Stakeholder> and <Value> has been expressed by various kinds of organizations whose plans have been included in the StratML collection. (Best viewed in MSIE 7 or higher. Values are distinguished from Stakeholders by hyphens.)
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See also:
- Joe's XMLDatasets tabular display of StratML documents to which additional documents can be added by using the Submit Query field. Click on the File Name links to see the tabular XML Sets view of each plan.
- The XForm form that Joe is developing, including his About StratML XForms page.
- Joe's Atom-enabled listing of StratML files by Wikipedia topics
- Joe's XSL Appliance Tool for the Web using Christopher Maden's style sheet.
U.S. Federal Agencies
Small Agencies
State & Local Agencies
Nonprofit Organizations
International Government Agencies
Educational Institutions
Other Plans
- Ari Knausenberger of Strategi Consulting developed a StratML parsing demonstration, which was formerly hosted at http://stratml.strategi-consulting.com/ and produced a tag cloud for the top 50 most frequently used <Goal> <Names>. The strategic plans in which each of those goal names occur could be retrieved by clicking on the tag name and scrolling to the bottom of the page to see the results. The most frequently occurring goal name is Education and it was used in the default query. The second most frequently used goal name was Advocacy, followed by Leadership, Membership, Infrastructure, Collaboration, Partnerships, Representation, Communication, and Research, rounding out the top ten.
- XML Simplicity's editorial portal enabled online editing of StratML documents using Authentic. Here is a brief description provided by Keith Matthew:
- XML Simplicity's (now Computer Composition of Canada, Inc.) StratML service provides powerful, yet easy-to-use, collection browsing and filtering of StratML documents. Users have complete control over collection display settings, such as sorting, grouping, highlighting, charting, downloading, column selection, etc. Documents are available for fast dynamic download in XML, PDF, RTF, and HTML formats. Editing of the StratML XML documents is available in either an offline or online word-processor like interface, that ensures consistent and correct XML source data.
- MarkLogic's StratML search service prototype contained all of the plans in the collection as of February 8, 2010. It was developed prior to finalization of Part 1 of the StratML standard. Jay Fohs and Sara Mazer of MarkLogic are redeveloping it with the latest versions of the files currently in the collection. The new prototype was to have been demonstrated by Jay and Andy Obermayer at the CIO Council's PlanningPlus seminar on November 15, 2012. However, the CIOC has been reorganized and it is unclear whether the demo will be rescheduled. In the meantime, images showing what the previous version looked like are available on slides 40 & 41 of the presentation Owen prepared for the Strategic Planning Innovation Conference.
- Pooyan Zamanian's StratML authoring, editing, and transformation portal, which is available in Farsi and English, enables the creation of strategic plans and the conversion of the "raw" (plain text XML) StratML files to XHTML using XSL Transformation. After entering the portal with the "guest" username and password (54321), users who have Microsoft's InfoPath forms application can download the form from the Strategic Plans page, enter the data, and upload the plan. (Plans that have been previously uploaded will also be available for editing and re-uploading.) After uploading, the user is re-directed to result page to view the transformed plan as it appears in XHML format on the Web.
- StratML Tagging with Microsoft Word: Quick Start Guide, Pradeep Jain & Vivian Dey, Ictect, September 25, 2009 - DOC | PDF
- A Strategic Communications Plan converted to StratML format by Owen Ambur on December 22, 2009, using MS Word with the assistance of the Quick Start Guide. (Note: Since the purpose of this exercise was to test the Guide and not to produce a "pretty" document, it has not been edited for appearance, to include all of the elements of the StratML core, or to remove verbiage that does not fit neatly into the elements of a StratML document.)
- Ken Holman of Crane Softwrights has compiled HTML and PDF stylesheets for StratML documents but they are based upon a previous version of the schema that has been supplanted by ANSI/AIIM 21:2009
- NIST's XML Instance Validation service can be used to remotely validate files against the StratML schema. For additional information, see KC Morris' announcement.
- NIEM mapping spreadsheet compiled by Allyson Ugarte and Sylvia Webb
- Liquid Technologies' Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an XML developers toolkit and IDE containing tools for designing and developing XML Schema and applications, with support for StratML and other public standards.
- See especially their documentation of the schema for StratML Part 1
- The schema for StratML Part 1, Strategic Plans, has been included in Schema Central by Priscilla Walmsley of Datypic.com.
- Owen Ambur is promoting the notion that political parties and candidates for elective office should be expected (by their constituencies) to post their platforms on the Web in StratML format. To prove the concept, he has begun posting the issue statements of candidates on his personal Web site. The 2012 GOP and Democrat platforms are available there in open, standard, machine-readable StratML format.
- Alex Rollin's StratML for Production Groups description (formerly Community Intelligence with StratML project wiki).
- Thomas von der Elbe's free-range voting demo using StratML to enable voting on the elements of a plan to form a non-profit organization.
- Alex Glaros' Nationwide Citizen General Suggestion Management prototype application project. See also Alex's site for the Center for Government Interoperability (CGI).
- Ivan Pedruzzi has uploaded the StratML schemata into the Stylus Studio online catalog repository. In Stylus Studio they can be accessed in the catalog via File -> Document Wizards.. -> XML editor -> User Defined Catalog. A tutorial is available showing how to created PDF forms from schemas using Stylus Studio.
- Gannon Dick of RUSTPrivacy.org is demonstrating datatype validation of StratML Part 1 & 2 files.
If you are aware of other services indexing or otherwise leveraging the emerging StratML standard and/or StratML documents, please contact Owen Ambur to have a link posted here. We are particularly interested in services addressing any of the prospective purposes of the standard but would be happy to be surprised by useful and creative services we have not yet anticipated.
See also our page listing the WebAddresses (URLs) of the StratML instance documents to facilitate reuse, including automated indexing by search services.
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Since the history of the StratML standard has become quite lengthy, it has been moved to a separate page.
- AIIM's StratML Standard Committee Page, announcements listserv & technical discussion listserv
- GAO's scorecard for evaluating strategic plans
- News coverage of StratML:
- Government Computer News (GCN)
- Federal Computer Week (FCW)
- Washington Technology (WT)
- Potomac Technology Culture Examiner Article by Alice Marshall, March 1, 2010
- Search engine queries: USA.gov | Google | Bing | Ask | AltaVista | Yahoo
- Wikipedia articles on: Strategic Planning | Strategy | Stakeholder | Theory of Value | Value Theory - Personal/Culural, Economics & Marketing | Utility | Management | Strategic Management | Program Evaluation | Performance Indicators | SMART | SWOT & PEST Analyses | Critical Success Factor (CSF) | Business Plan | Integrated Business Planning | Group Development | Coaching | Extensible Markup Language (XML) | Markup Languages | Artificial Language | XML Schema | W3C XSD
- Business Rules Group's Business Motivation Model, September 2007
- A proposed high-level model for strategic planning, June 2001
- Perspectives on Strategic Planning in the Public Sector, a monograph by Richard D. Young recommending usage of John Bryson's 10-step model
- Stakeholder analysis techniques, article in Public Management Review, by John Bryson, 2004
- When Did Strategy Become a Four Letter Word? Article by Sandy Richardson, September 27, 2011
- Preparing for Your Journey, Personal Goal Setting, Blog by Sherri MacKey of Luminosity Global, October 28, 2011