All federal agencies are under a mandate (Section 207 of the 2002 E-Government Act) to develop overall taxonomies of their Web sites by the end of 2004. Thus begins a mad dash to develop thousands -- millions -- of word, letter, number and combination classifications of documents, e-mail messages and other information within specific hierarchies. Experts say the trick to organizing all these documents is to build taxonomies around central objectives. Although information technology workers are often given the task to do this job, it's important to bring domain or business experts onboard to work on classifications and vocabulary. Categorizing is the largest task in building a taxonomy -- taking up about a third of the work. To cut development time, agencies can modify taxonomies already developed by others, such as the Taxonomy Warehouse at http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com. Watching this formidable process unfold -- which some experts say many agencies may be underestimating -- will be important to other industries, because while government agencies are the first to mandate taxonomies -- and though many taxonomies are already in widespread use -- commercial enterprises are sure to follow suit.
posted by Marcus Zillman |
5:26 AM
