SchemaLogic and Vocabulary Management Group Deliver Taxonomy Management Solution for United Kingdom School System.

KIRKLAND, Wash. & LONDON -- British Educational Communications and Technology Agency implements comprehensive, nationwide system to create, manage and synchronize vocabularies and publishes them as metadata

SchemaLogic, a leader in enterprise metadata and taxonomy management software, today announced that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) has implemented a cross-application taxonomic metadata management solution developed by SchemaLogic and the Vocabulary Management Group (VMG). The comprehensive, solution will help BECTA create, manage and synchronize vocabularies for all U.K. schools and learning segments, and publish them as metadata to facilitate effective, efficient knowledge sharing nationwide. BECTA is the U.K. government's key partner in the strategic development and delivery of its information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning strategies for the education sector.

"One of the greatest technology challenges we faced was the growing number of taxonomies and vocabularies generated by the sector's growing number of portals, Web services, content harvesting applications, content repositories and learning platforms," said Barry Kruger, head of content management for BECTA. "Many of our institutions had implemented a number of piecemeal solutions in an attempt to remedy the situation. After a thorough evaluation of taxonomy and metadata management solutions, we turned to SchemaLogic and VMG to help create a common information model and centralize the management of multiple school taxonomies. The SchemaLogic/VMG application creates a number of efficiencies that will save valuable tax dollars, as well as provide a convenient interface for users nationwide to search, find and share information."

"We are pleased that BECTA has turned to SchemaLogic and our partner, VMG, for taxonomy and metadata management support," said Jeff Dirks, president and chief executive officer of SchemaLogic. "We have implemented a common information model and centralized taxonomy control that will facilitate effective and efficient knowledge sharing for all those working in the schools and learning sectors of the United Kingdom. The single, overarching taxonomy management system supports nationwide adoption through a custom interface and intuitive workflows, which will improve information findability, reduce content management costs, and simplify operations across the country."

SchemaLogic worked with VMG to develop a solution that met the needs of all the schools and learning programs associated with BECTA. VMG built a user-friendly Java client with intuitive workflows for each of the application components, including Vocabulary Studio, which allows knowledge workers to create and manage vocabularies within the SchemaLogic solution, and Vocabulary Bank, which allows other staff to browse vocabularies.

"SchemaLogic metadata management solution is designed to integrate with multiple enterprise applications, so it is inherently flexible," said Mike Collett, director of Vocabulary Management Group. "This allowed our developers to build and integrate a customized interface that will be easy and intuitive for users."

The SchemaLogic/VMG solution addressed all key requirements of the BECTA Vocabulary Studio initiative, including:

--Map between equivalent terms in different vocabularies;

--Identify different terms with equivalent meanings existing in the same taxonomy, and represent the relationship in the classification scheme (tag once; classify many times);

--Communicate via Web services with other applications, such as front-end portals or back-end tagging applications; and

--Support an evolving taxonomy and integrate new taxonomies with minimal effort.

BECTA partnered with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which owns the English National Curriculum, to launch phase one of the SchemaLogic/VMG solution in September 2005. The organizations began with science and mathematics, and plan to roll out the rest of the curriculum by July 2006. By January 2006, BECTA expects to begin working with other sector agencies, including the National College for School Leadership.

About Vocabulary Management Group

The Vocabulary Management Group was formed in 2005 by three like-minded companies with extensive experience and expertise in vocabulary and metadata management. The founding companies are Schemeta, Knowledge Integration and Metataxis. For more information on the group, visit www.vocman.com.

About SchemaLogic

SchemaLogic (www.schemalogic.com) provides metadata management and taxonomy reconciliation that helps organizations unlock silos of unstructured information across the enterprise improving findability for knowledge workers throughout the organization. By managing the context of information, SchemaLogic's solutions help organizations increase their business agility through greater ease of information integration, improve the collaboration between information architects and business stakeholders, and implement stricter governance by enabling advanced classification and control of corporate documents. SchemaLogic is a private company with headquarters in Kirkland, Wash.

For details see www.schemalogic.com, e-mail [e-mail] or call 425-885-9695.