Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture

[Doug McDavid <dougmcdavid@xxxxxxxxx>]

@Pavritha (and all) --

Let me present a fairly simple, but real, example of what I am talking about (hoping to find similar interest among this august confluence of ontology and enterprisology thinkers).

My current project is enterprise architecture for the California state prison system.  In that system there is a word commonly used, across different departments, and that word is "bed".  It is almost immediately obvious that in this (set of) domain(s), that word does not have the common, everyday connotation of a piece of furniture primarily used for sleeping.  I would say that I just expressed an ontological positioning of the word bed as used in contexts that everyone is familiar with.

However, in the prison (corrections and rehabilitation) context, "bed" means much more.  What it means is the cell location for a particular inmate.  It is their entire living quarters though maybe not eating, maybe not recreational, depending on the institution.  Because of the variance among institutions the word "bed" may bring social considerations, such as, should this inmate have a cell-mate, are there any gang-related issues to restrict the "bed" to a certain cell-block, what level of security must be maintained for this inmate (maximum security, etc.).  Is this inmate a celebrity prisoner, of which we have our share in California, from Charles Manson to Scott Peterson.  

I am not hoping to transform wardens and prison housing administrators into ontologists, such that their work register becomes a precise, logicalized patois.  I am saying that it is incumbent on enterprise architects to understand the institutional architecture within they are working, and reflect that back to designers and decision-makers.  I am also saying that such reflection would benefit from the rigorous understanding of meaning that I keep hoping is the mission of those who have taken up the banner of ontology.

Why am I concerned (in this example)?  Partly because I see daily e-mails about beds becoming available in various institutions (whose names you might recognize -- Pelican Bay, etc.).  Now, as a lowly sub-contractor working through a smallish consultancy that is in turn contracted with CDCR in conjunction with an IT system where HP is the prime, it seems strange to me that institutional confinement space allocation goes out as a broadcast e-mail, such that I get it.  And this concern arises directly from an interest in classifying and unpacking what the enterprise is saying to itself, in its own natural, but parochial, language.

Does any of this make sense to anyone here?  I think it is both entertaining and useful, but then no one ever said I was normal!

Cheers,

Doug

On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 12:18 AM, Ian Bailey <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

 

The defence departments of Australia, Canada, Sweden, UK and US have been working on a formal ontology to support their enterprise architecture efforts – www.ideasgroup.org

 

All we’ve released so far is the foundation - http://www.ideasgroup.org/foundation/ - but quite a bit more has been done on building patterns for processes, agents, information, systems, capabilities, etc. The foundation has been used to underpin the DoDAF 2.0 meta-model (DM2) – though the resulting meta-model isn’t what most people would recognise as an ontology. The Swedish Armed Forces are investigating how the MODAF Meta-Model (currently a UML Profile) could be re-engineered into a formal ontology based on IDEAS.

 

John Zachman was over in the UK in March for the Integrated-EA conference and had some discussions with UK MOD on ontology and enterprise architecture. From the brief conversations I had with him, he seemed very enthusiastic about ontology in general.

 

At the same conference, Jonathan Carter and Jason Powell presented on an open-source approach to EA development using Protege – see http://www.integrated-ea.com/Previous-Years

 

Back in 2007, I presented on ontology and EA at the Open Group and EA Europe conferences – slides are here: http://www.modelfutures.com/Publications/

 

That, and the paper from Top Quadrant (which has already been mentioned in this thread) are the only efforts I’m aware of for “semantic EA”.

 

Hope this helps

--

Ian Bailey

Model Futures

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--
Doug McDavid
Skype: dougmcdavid
Mobile: 916-549-4600
Second Life: Doug McDavid
Web: enterprisology.com

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