[Commonwealth of Australia]
Functional Requirements for a Whole-of-Australian-Government Search Architecture


5. Recommendations

The SEWG recommends:

5.1 For the short term, adoption of a cooperative model in which locally created metadata, together with index data for document full texts (where appropriate) would be gathered in a shared index for the whole-of-Australian government search facility. This model could, in the first instance, be an adaptation of an existing Internet search service to meet the functional requirements set out in this report.

5.2 For the medium and long term, adoption of a distributed model for the whole-of-Australian government search facility. This model would involve the creation and indexing of AGLS metadata by individual agencies or consortia in the agency layer. The whole-of-Australian government search facility would interact with the agency indexes by invoking the respective agency or consortia search engines via the middle layer.

5.3 Adoption of the functional requirements set out in Section 3 of this report.

5.4 Development of a policy framework to enable efficient and effective interaction between the proposed whole-of-Australian government search facility and individual agency search engines. This framework should cover the issues of site indexing, registration, and interface.

5.5 Subject to the completion of a costing estimate and business case, preparation of an RTF based on this document for:


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Last updated 13 January 1998