GCL : View from the centre

1
GCL View from the centre

• Stella G Dextre Clarke
• Information Consultant,
• Cabinet Office

2
Neighbours in the standards world

• ..
• ..
• SGML HTML XML XSLT RDF TopicMaps
• MARC21 AACR2 GCL Dewey UDC
• ..LCC LCSH MeSH AAT..
• .....

3
Seen another way
GCL
e-GIF
e-GMS
GCL
4
e-Government Interoperability Framework includes
standards for

• Interconnectivity
• Data integration
• Information/services access
• Content management
• e-GMS (for all metadata)
• GCL (for Subject metadata)

5
GCL Top Level Categories

• Agriculture, environment and natural resources
• Arts, recreation and travel
• Business and industry
• Crime, law, justice and rights
• Economics and finance
• Education, careers and employment
• Government, politics and public administration
• Health, nutrition and care
• Information and communication
• International affairs and defence
• People, communities and living
• Science, technology and innovation

6
One GCL Hierarchy expanded

• People, communities and living
• Benefits
• Charities
• Volunteering
• Death and funerals
• Drugs and alcohol
• Alcohol use and abuse
• Drugs use and abuse
• Smoking
• continues

7
One GCL category record

• Drugs and alcohol
• Use for Glue sniffing
• Solvent abuse
• Substance addiction
• Broader category Health
• People, communities and living
• Narrower category Alcohol use and abuse
• Drugs use and abuse
• Smoking

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Features of the GCL

• Browse tool rather than search tool
• Taxonomy rather than thesaurus
• Citizen-oriented
• Small and simple (400 categories 1200 lead-ins)
• Coverage whole of UK public sector
• Polyhierarchical
• Consultation procedure for updates

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How does the GCL help?

• Supports point-and-click
• Searches disambiguated/focussed by limiting them
  to one subject area
• Portals/websites can be populated by mapping from
  metadata
• But if you want help with search terms, something
  more is needed

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Additional GCL guidance

• GCL maintenance guide
• Guide to meta-tagging with the GCL
• Specialised vocabularies and the GCL
• Implementing the GCL
• Design/selection criteria for software used to
  handle controlled vocabularies
• All the above are at
• http//www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/gcldocu
  ments.asp

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GCL project includes

• Viewed from the centre (OeE)
• GCL available for implementation
• Guidance materials
• Software functional requirements specification
• Implementation advice
• Viewed from the rest of the public sector
• The real work of implementation

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Some implementation challenges

• Import the GCL
• Integrate GCL with Content Management System
• Integrate GCL with discovery interface
• Implement automatic categorisation
• Mappings

13
GCL background Key references

• http//www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/egif.as
  p (e-GIF)
• http//www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/metadat
  a.asp (e-GMS v3.0)
• http//www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/gcl.asp
  (GCL)
• http//www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/gcldocu
  ments.asp (GCL guidance documents)
• SDClarke_at_LukeHouse.demon.co.uk