Monday, November 07, 2005

OMB mulls evolving beyond GILS

Agency looks for ideas on replacing metadata tagging for document searches

Now OMB is asking whether technology has surpassed GILS, which officials said relies on metadata tagging, and whether there is something that is less costly and more effective for searching the mounds of government data.

“The question is whether we want to go down the GILS road again, or hasn’t current search technology leapfrogged metadata tagging?” said Glenn Schlarman, chief of OMB’s information policy and technology branch. “GILS is time-consuming and arduous to do.”

OMB, through the General Services Administration, recently released a request for information asking vendors for ideas for more “efficient and effective information retrieval and sharing.” Responses were due Oct. 21, and OMB expects to analyze the answers this month.


Let's see what comes out of the Request for Information. I'm inclined to think a too top-down policy on tagging will prove unworkable.

In any case, if the government decides to upgrade the Government Information Locator Service with a more flexible, exact search technology, there is a great deal of money to be made.

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