Extensible Markup Language (XML) is rapidly becoming the protocol used for communicating data. AAMVA's membership recognizes the capability of XML to allow them to move existing applications to the Internet, and AAMVA is working to assist jurisdictions in this effort.
AAMVA's Involvement
This is also a new area for members and AAMVA initially formed a working group to assist with members' efforts. The mission of the group was to facilitate data interchange between jurisdictions and their industry partners by defining, publishing, and promoting standardized XML templates. The group started working on XML definitions for Driver History and Vehicle Information messages. This involved creating our own standard and defining the messages based on this.
In a separate project, AAMVA worked with International Justice & Public Safety Information Sharing Network (Nlets) to standardize the elements used in the Nlets driver messages. Nlets decided to implement the standardized messages in XML and use an XML standard being developed by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Rather then have two standards, AAMVA joined the Global Justice XML Standards Task Force and merged our standards with those being developed by the DOJ and incorporated the elements used by law enforcement into the Justice XML Data Dictionary.
The standard developed by the DOJ is the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) which conforms to many XML standards (e.g. Federal XML, Legal XML, etc) and XML guidelines (e.g. OASIS UBL, ebXML, ISO 11179, etc.). The GJXDM was awarded one of the American Council for Technology's (ACT) prestigious 2004 Intergovernmental Solutions Awards, for demonstrating tremendous progress in government collaboration and innovative use of technology. The Office of Justice Programs is hosting the GJXDM, their site includes background information and the GJXDM, with its supporting documentation.
The Driver and Vehicle elements that the motor vehicle community shares with law enforcement have been included in the Global Justice XML Data Model. This covers about a third of the elements AAMVAs membership works with. AAMVA is planning to prepare our own dictionary for the other elements used by DMVs that fall outside the scope of the DOJ, this will cover all the elements in the ANSI D20 standard. This dictionary will use the same XML standards as the DOJ dictionary.
Contact: Mark Pritchard, (703) 908-5790.