4 Developing the e-GIF

4.1 How to extend the e-GIF

The Custodian and Steward of the e-GIF encourage agencies to submit technical standards, especially schemas that have been developed for an agency's specific business needs or for the needs of several agencies in a sector or area of business.

Including these in the framework ensures such standards are widely recognised in the New Zealand public sector and can be applied, where appropriate, to meet business needs elsewhere in the sector.

The governance processes put in place for the e-GIF aim to balance the collective interest of government with the interests of individual agencies and their stakeholders. Where this is not possible, collective interest should be given greater priority.

4.2 Submitting a new standard

The e-GIF is regularly reviewed and updated by issuing a revised version of this document. However, extensions to the e-GIF can be suggested at any time. This should be done by first contacting e-gif@ssc.govt.nz.

Proposed extensions will be reviewed by working groups that advise the e-GIF Custodian. The Custodian makes recommendations to the e-GIF Steward, through the e-GIF Management Committee.

Agencies that are required to adopt the e-GIF may appeal decisions to the Management Committee.

The standards submission process, together with a template to propose a new standard, can be found at http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/e-gif/faqs. Note that the agency proposing the standard is expected to take a share in the development and governance of the standard.

4.3 Principles for developing the framework

As well as the principles outlined in this document, a number of guiding principles have been developed for the long-term. For further information email e-gif@ssc.govt.nz.

4.4 Alignment with other framework initiatives

Open standards feature strongly in the e-GIF. OASIS, W3C, ISO and other standards organisations are developing standards with a global user base in mind.

The New Zealand e-GIF also draws from other jurisdictions, most notably the United Kingdom and Australia.

Agencies and service sectors are encouraged to draw from open standards to facilitate a greater level of uptake for bundled services in the future.

4.5 Issues under review

The 2005 e-GIF Review Group recommends the following strategies for further developing the e-GIF:

• Extending the layer model: The layer model (See Part 1, Section 1.1) categorises the technology standardised by the e-GIF structurally but not functionally. In practice, standards have a context. Some standards may only work in a particular situation or for a particular domain, or depend on the use of other standards, or represent high level aggregations of lower level components. One possibility is to include additional descriptions to the standards, such as "applicable to", "used by", "used with", "pre-requisites" and/or "relies on". Another possibility is to create an additional category, or layer, for the emerging use of implementation profiles for XML-based standards.
• Changing Recommended (R) to Emerging (E): There is some confusion about the word "Recommended" in the current e-GIF compliance status levels (see Part 1, Section 1.3). For example, a new version of a product might be better, therefore recommended, but actually less interoperable until more agencies use it. Ultimately, we would like to see the new version used, and therefore we recommend it when upgrading. Another ambiguity is that some may believe that if a standard is "Adopted", it is the standard and, therefore, why would another be "Recommended"? To address these concerns, another word such as "Emerging" might replace "Recommended" in future for this status level.
• Adding review cycle information: Since standards proceed through a cycle of compliant statuses, review cycle information could be included to indicate how long each standard is in force and when it is due for review.
• Continuous review cycles: With technology changing constantly, the e-GIF needs to be updated continuously to remain relevant.
• Using RFC 2119 : This RFC could be used to clarify the interpretation of key words related to the standards. It standardises use of the words "must", "must not", "required", "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "recommended", "may", and "optional" when specifying requirement level.