Last May, I gave the keynote at the annual SEMIC (Semantic Interoperability Centre) annual conference in Brussels, at the invitation of the European Commission’s CIO Francisco García Morán, and was invited to share my thoughts on stimulating semantic development as much as possible.

One of my observations then — and now — is how a software platform called Be Informed works particularly well at bringing business and technology people together. In summary, “They really get it.”

I was back in Europe last week learning about Be Informed 4 from Menno Gulpers, Knowledge Architect – Chief Trainer, with the Be Informed Academy.

Be Informed 4 is an advanced software platform for both business and technology people to build dynamic case management applications. It enables organizations to realize knowledge-intensive administrative processes where complex decisions have to be made on a regular basis.

The real strength and genius of Be Informed 4 is the separation of concerns into Business Speak and Technology Speak so one can capture the business essence and rules in semantic models and refine the behavior in profiles. More details are found elsewhere.

Menno gave me the Be Informed Practitioner training and demonstrations of how to build an application and this afternoon he guided me in building the Housing Benefit Application outlined below.

As you can see from the tutorial slides, the Model = Design + Application + Documentation and all of the them are Semantic Services. Be Informed 4 is a major achievement in agile development for business and technology people that does not require conventional software development.

Simply put: Imagine diagramming models and having a working website without writing any code.

• Create the Models: Customer Register, Benefit Request, and Eligibility Model (draw the diagrams and connect the boxes)
• Publish a Decision Document (say how you want the models to work together)
• Create a Portal Model (say you want the models to work together on the Web)
• Run the Model on the Web (launch the models on the Web)
• Refine the Models (enter some sample data into the Web Portal and see if it works the way you intended, if not, change the Models and Descision Document and relaunch until satisfied)

Be Informed can be used to improve data collection from websites in general, especially where spreadsheets are used, and users are left to their own discretion as to the quality and quantity of data they enter and submit.

It is possible to reach a level of trust by clients with use of Be Informed 4 that they would see that the cost of pilots are less than the cost of the formal procurement process and the cost of implementations are significantly less than the cost of their legacy systems. I suggest that government employees and contractors try it to save time and money.

A recent Potomac Forum announcement said: Agile Systems Development is the New Approach to Rapidly Implement Systems within 3 to 6 Months as Outlined in the “25-Point Plan“.

I agree and say let’s have a bake-off of these agile methods on similar applications and compare the time, cost, and results.