Presented at the 10th annual Data Harmony Users Group meeting on Tuesday, February 11, 2014 by Marcie Zaharee of the MITRE Corporation. Describes the use of Data Harmony Thesaurus Master by the NGA-DCGS Metadata Harmonization (MDH) project to create and manage the Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) Operations taxonomy. The results of the project suggest that an ISR Operations taxonomy can be built, exported, and shared with the DoD and intelligence communities in a format that both users and systems can understand, and that the taxonomy can serve as an aid in populating metadata fields to increase discovery of data assets.

1. 1
Taxonomy Development Revisited
Lessons Learned*
Marcie Zaharee, PhD
Data Harmony User Conference
February 2014
mzaharee@mitre.org
1
*Fahsi, A., Zaharee, M. (2013). Framework for Developing an Intelligence
Reconnaissance and Surveillance (ISR) Operations Taxonomy.
MITRE Technical ReportApproved for Public Release

2. 2
Overview
• Recap from last year
– ISR Operations Taxonomy Development effort and framework
• Lessons Learned
– Working in teams
– Working with SMEs
– Developing, Maintaining, Exporting, and Posting
• Summary
Approved for Public Release

3. 3
ISR Operations Taxonomy*
Research Questions:
• Can an adequate unclassified ISR Operations taxonomy be
built from open source material?
• Can an unclassified ISR Operations taxonomy be designed
in a way that:
– Is repeatable?
– Is easily accessible and understandable to the end user?
• How can an ISR Operations taxonomy…
– Provide terms for population of metadata?
– Be effectively exported to a machine-readable language and used to
facilitate searches?
*Classification scheme to categorize ISR Operations data assets (i.e.,
platforms and sensors)
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4. 4
Taxonomy Development Framework
Approved for public release 13-140

5. 5
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6. 6
Educate team members
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7. 7
Build consensus, not necessarily unanimity
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8. 8
Document decisions
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9. 9
A network of experts is essential
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10. 10
Establish guidelines when working with
SMEs
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11. 11
Graphical Representation is helpful when
working with SMEs
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12. 12
Establish file naming conventions
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13. 13
Aggregation can present a challenge
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14. 14
Authoritative Sources May Not Exist
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15. 15
Maintaining terms is complex and
resource intensive
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16. 16
Export terms in a machine readable
language
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17. 17
Understand posting requirements when
working with repositories
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18. 18
User Feedback
• Human Readable
– Download metrics on Data Services Environment reflect interest in the
ISR taxonomies
– Differences in opinion on categorization of terms and overall hierarchy
• Machine Ingestible
– Longer PT and NPT names may result in unreadable User Interface (UI)
list labels as well as impacting search
Approved for Public Release

19. 19
Summary
• Successfully answered our research questions
– Can an adequate unclassified ISR Operations taxonomy be built from
open source material?
– Can an unclassified ISR Operations taxonomy be designed in a way
that it is repeatable and understandable?
– How can an ISR Operations taxonomy be exported to a machine-
readable language and used to facilitate searches and provide terms for
population of metadata
• Nine step framework essential to our proof of concept,
but not without its limitations
Approved for Public Release