OWIS DUNS # 101204332

OWIS CAGE Code  1PUY0

OWIS IANA Dotted Object Identifier (OID) 1.3.6.1.4.1.4912

OWIS urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.4912

OWIS SIC 7379, 8742, 8748, 8732

OWIS NAICS 542512, 541519, 541611, 541618

GEM ASN.1 Dotted OID: 2.25.146725524473310302975917199564148688155

GEM ANS.1 URN:oid:2.25.146725524473310302975917199564148688155

GEM ASN.1 UUID: 6e624ee0-e175-11d9-8435-0002a5d5c51b

I am providing a reduced set of OWIS Information at: http://sites.google.com/a/one-world-is.org/gem-ema/Home for document discussion

Authored by Roy Roebuck since 1982.  Release to the public domain. 

Available for Free Use.  See Rights Notice and Disclaimer.

OWIS™ is a small company working to help improve the management of complex enterprise information, from individual to universal scale, as a foundation for Enterprise Management, Engineering, Improvement, and Security (MIES)™,.  It accomplishes this from a multidisciplinary synthesis of management, social, information, computer, psychological, and network sciences. 

This synthesis has led to ideas on using a Generalized Management Information meta-model , metaschema, and schema for individuals, teams, organizations, nations, and species, with "Management" being the "pursuit of oneness".   (NOTE:  I use the prefix "meta" to mean "context for".) It documents an approach called "Context Awareness Management"™, which is the automated support of contextual awareness for enterprise processes, individuals, groups, organizations, and value chains.

OWIS™ supports the management of complex enterprise information by providing a publicly-accessible method for mapping and tracking the existence, relations, attributes and changes of those things known to effect or be effected by the enterprise.  A recently applied term for this is an "Information Operating System".  It provides a means of organizing and enriching the avalanche of information in ways expanding on the the 1945 "Memex" of Vannevar Bush, and the 1960 "Xanadu" of Ted Nelson.  This has significant benefit to those managing and working on complex projects (e.g., major development programs), those preparing for large-change planning and control (e.g., community transformation), or those preparing for speculative contingencies (e.g., Y2K computer errors, future scenario projections).  Information systems built from the OWIS™ metamodel, metaschema, and schema will provide an integrated multifunctional (i.e., unified) rich database that support multidimensional (multiple axis) and multicentric enterprise intelligence (e.g., business intelligence, market intelligence, value-chain intelligence) for decision thinking and decision support.

OWIS™ is a company formed to educate the world on the Roebuck Generalized Endeavor Management™ (GEM™ ) methodology.  The GEM™  provides an architecture, and management technology infrastructure and mechanisms to support global Situational, Historical, and Plan Awareness, independent of the user's location.  The current industry initiatives in Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) and Business Intelligence are steps towards the capabilities provided by an information system built with the GEM™  design.

Roy's invention is a Generalized Management™ information meta-model , metaschema, and schema for individuals, teams, organizations, nations, and species.  It documents an approach he now call "Context Management"™, which is the automated support of contextual awareness (relevant situational omniscience) for enterprise processes, individuals, groups, organizations, and value chains.

The terms "Knowledge Age" and "pervasive connectivity" are becoming prevalent in the community of the Web.  I believe we should join those terms' implications to state that we are accelerating more into the "Awareness Age", as a predecessor to the "Age of Wisdom".  As background, prior to our current IT, our awareness was largely sense-based and verbally communicated, and then as we began to write and print books our awareness began to become intellectually based.  Soon it will have much greater automated support, as described below, yielding pervasive awareness on a global scale.  This is a twofold global scale, in that any individual on the globe can have global awareness of the situations that are contextually relevant to them.    (Note:  the quotation marks around the first use of distinct terms relevant to this comment.)

See the diagram at /rer/owis/dem/slides/img020.gif.  I see the following "Contextual" progression towards "Awareness", and its successor, "Wisdom": 

"Events" (real or virtual) generate "Signals" (digital or analog), which are "Transmitted" through a "Medium", which are "Received" by "Sensors" of a "Receiver", which "Organizes" the Event, Transmitter, Medium, Signal, Receipt, and Sensor "Attributes" into Contextual "Data" of the Event, "Stored" in a variety of "Records".  This is basic information science. 

Expanding on that, Stored Event Data, Organized in the "Viewer's" Context as a "Perception", "Report", "Form", "Document", or "Table", is "Information". 

Information in Context is "Knowledge". 

Knowledge in Context is Awareness. 

Awareness in Context is Wisdom. 

With the evolution of database and online technology moving from operational data environments (transactional systems), to analytical environments (OLAP, DSS, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, etc.), to Online Transactional and Analytical applications, to their combination in Enterprise Information Portals with "role-based access" and privacy-controls (the center-point of the Knowledge Age), it won't be long until a "user's" Knowledge is continuously and automatically refreshed based on the user's dynamic context,  thus entering the Awareness Age.  Here, the user could represent a person, mechanism (application or appliance), group, or organization. 

When the Awareness Age is prevalent across our world, then we will begin to enter the Wisdom Age.  To understand the implications of the Awareness Age and Wisdom Age, consider that the term "pervasive connectivity" is also descriptive of the intellectual, mental, emotional, and perceptual state of one who believes that they have a personal relationship with God and the entire world, a mystic.  See the diagram at /rer/owis/dem/slides/img019.gif.  In the same way that our progress in exchange (transportation) and interchange (telegraph, telephone, telecommunication, and television) have led to greater access to global information, thus increasing our awareness, the Web form of interchange will lead to even greater evidence and acceptance of our interdependence as a whole.  It will provide the means to help those people who seem themselves as isolated and separate from each other to understand that they are all connected to each other and the world around them.  This sense of interdependence, without loss of unique identity, is a foundation for a personal sense of freedom, responsibility, love (as what you include in your identity), and power.

Here's a copy of my most recent letter to the U.S. Government on GEM™ .  OMB seems to have taken notice, because the recent Federal Enterprise Architecture can be implemented using GEM™, and thus the concepts I describe below.

11/04/2000
 

Hello:


I propose that Congress, OMB, GAO, and the Executive Branch begin to use the same technology now being internationally applied to manage large information technology information technology (IT) capabilities as a foundation for a new class of national-standard government management management systems, and provide these same standards for use by business and private management management systems.

This proposed class of management management systems class of management systems would overcome many of the inherent difficulties of integrating and collaborating within and between national government functions, and with citizens, groups, other governments, and businesses.

Technical Background.

The technology , here being proposed for extension into general purpose management use, is now fully implemented and is present on all major computing and network platforms , is known as "Web Based Enterprise Management Enterprise Management " (WBEM ). WBEM consists of open source technology , techniques, and notations developed by the OpenGroup and Object Management Group (OMG), specifically for the purpose of managing and integrating the dynamic conditions and information present in large collections of IT such as networks , computer platforms , computer software, configurations, devices, and services. The organization chartered with responsibility for the WBEM is the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) (http://www.dmtf.org). WBEM can provide the same capabilities for any collection of objects requiring management and integration, far beyond just IT.

WBEM supports both internal enterprise , as well as intra-enterprise , collaboration and value-chain integration in the management of IT (but does not yet extend beyond managing IT objects). Every implementation of WBEM for an IT component, whether at the personal, team, department, enterprise , or global-value-chain level, is inherently integratable and synchronizable due to the use of a common information schema at its core , like a common vocabulary, grammar, alphabet.

This common information schema  is known as the Common Information Model (CIM ), with IT-specific implementations to manage general IT information (CIM Core ), component-type IT information (CIM Common schema ), and vendor-specific IT information (CIM extension schema ).

Fundamentals.

The CIM in turn is built on a foundation known as the CIM Metaschema, developed by the above OpenGroup and OMG.  The metaschema, in its simplest form, is a design for a general purpose "object" management management system .  Using the metaschema, any enterprise , whether international, national, government, corporate, or private could build a full-spectrum, full life cycle, whole-enterprise management enterprise management management system , for all of its categories of resources, across the full life cycle of all of its requirements, across all of its processes, functions, working groups, organizations, locations, at all times.

The presence of the metaschema itself is powerful, but just like an alphabet and grammar without a vocabulary , it's not useful in itself. What is needed then is not just the general management engine built from the metaschema, but a general management model that can be applied as a common vocabulary and structure for all enterprise and inter-enterprise endeavors. This type of modeling is known as "enterprise modeling" and is now codified in the International Standards Organization (ISO) 14258 standard. An open source system design that integrates the WBEM and a general enterprise model (GEM™ ) to form a general enterprise management enterprise management engine is presented on my web web site (/rer/owis).

The major shortcoming of the WBEM itself is in the limited vision and explanation of its use by its current IT practitioners. Its current focus is only on management of IT, helping to resolve all of the complexity, diversity, and dynamics of these IT components into an ordered dynamic management system .

Elaboration and Personal Experiences:

To form an analogy, I submit that a leaf is interdependent with its connecting twig, a twig with its branch, a branch with its trunk, a trunk with its roots, and the full tree with its surrounding soil and atmosphere, and each tree within an ecology, all within a global ecosystem. WBEM , as an IT management technology , is a twig of management functionality.

But that same "IT management design pattern" - just like "DNA" - when fed into an enabling seed that grew this IT management twig, can grow into a general purpose management design pattern for all resource categories (knowledge management , person sustainment and thriving, skills management , funds management , materiel (supplies, equipment) management , facilities management , services management , space management , energy management ), across all processes (executive, production, and resourcing), across all functions (executive, production, and resourcing programs/projects/contracts), across all working groups (teams, offices, communities), across all organizations (government, commercial, private) across all locations (physical and virtual), across all time (past/history,  present/response/decision, and future/plans/contingencies).

I have been proposing this since 1982, having submitted formal suggestions into the US Army Suggestion Program in 1988, 1989, and 1991, and into the Defense Information Systems Agency Suggestion Program in 1992. I also wrote letters to President Bush and Presidential Candidate Clinton in early 1992, and Vice President Gore in 1994. I had presented the same design to the Executive Director for the Governor of the State of Arkansas, in 1991. I also wrote a public letter to NewsWeek Magazine in 1992, encouraging Ross Perot to spend his money implementing this system and an online Participative Governance system, as a gift to the country and world, rather than pursue political office.


In each of these cases, the old adage about "no wine before its time" comes into play. Prior to 1995 the concepts were just too foreign and the technology and management science just to far over the horizon for most readers to see. To quote another adage: "they'll see it when they believe it". But now, with the ubiquitous presence of the Internet, Web database applications, XML, LDAP, PKI, Java, Phython, ZOPE, SQL/ODBC/JDBC and other expanding technologies , the concepts and science are being seen and recognized. Best of all the technology to enable this new class of management management systems class of management systems is generally free or opensource, and is already widely deployed and part of most organizations' skill base.


For those who might be concerned about this capability becoming some sort of "big brother" control mechanism, I would submit that the approach described in my web site above, and the diligence of the variety of privacy and citizens right groups, as well as individual diligence, will actually produce a very powerful system that has exactly the opposite effect - it will open up any enterprise to detailed public or auditing scrutiny, within reasonably negotiated and applied security, proprietary, competitive value, trade-secret, and privacy constraints. The result would be a truly open, collaborative, responsive, dynamic, and honest environment for governance, commerce, academia, and private endeavors.


Credentials:

I've worked in both corporate level management , management analysis, information management , and information technology management for 25 years. My primary work has been with the U.S. Department of Defense, although I have worked in commercial enterprises, largely supporting government for the past five years. I have a Master Degree in Systems Management (1985, Univ. South. California), and have spent the last 18 years doing deep analysis of this subject, inspired by visions of this capability as a youth. (see /rer/owis/GEM -Beginnings.htm).



Roy Roebuck
One World Information System
VA 703-598-2351
roy(AT)one-world-is.org

 

1982-2002.  Generalized Endeavor Management (GEM™ ) information is released into the public domain by Roy Roebuck.

Next - OWIS™ Technical Information