Draft Update ARB Mission Charter

As part of the annual review of projects, governing language, membership etc., The ARB is considering a recommendation to revise the GOM and remove the stipulations about the ARB. Instead, recommend to move that language to some other location/document which is more flexible and easier to modify in order to efficiently support organizational strategic and tactical goals for HL7.

In addition, we are drafting modifications to the work group mission and work group charter in support of the change to move ARB definitions and constraints to another governance document and to align with the language in support of strategic and tactical organizational goals.

Current Work Group Mission

The HL7 Architecture Board seeks to achieve a coherent architecture for HL7 that defines the relationships across and between the HL7 work products, processes, and organizational structure and how they relate to other standards. This architecture includes the Business Architecture by which these work products are produced, managed and governed.

Current Work Group Charter

Work Products and Contributions to HL7 Processes

• The Architecture Board (ArB) defines and maintains the principles, language, and grammar of the Services Aware Interoperability Framework (SAIF) Canonical Definition (CD).

• As an extension of the SAIF CD, the ArB also defines the mechanisms to ensure consistency of and traceability across and between HL7 standards artifacts from conceptual, logical, and implementable viewpoints.

• The ArB provides guidance and support to working groups submitting artifacts or methodology using the SAIF IG to ensure they are compliant with the principles and language of the SAIF CD.?

• The ArB reviews, or evaluates other reviews of, work products using the SAIF CD review methodology. It provides a report that outlines any deviations from the SAIF CD methodology or measures of quality. Where such a work product is sent to full membership ballot, the ArB report shall be included in the ballot package.

• The ArB may review the Mission and Charter and Project Scope statements of HL7 Working Groups prior to their consideration by the Technical Steering Committee. The ArB will consider whether projects undertaken are appropriately defined within HL7s mission.

• The ArB will advise the Technical Steering Committee and Board of Directors on matters relating to architectural aspects of standards artifacts as they are produced by HL7 Working Groups.

• The ArB may review work products when requested to by HL7 Working Groups or the TSC.

• Formal Relationships With Other HL7 Groups: Not Applicable

• Formal Relationships With Other HL7 Groups

The membership and chair of the ArB are appointed by the CTO and ratified by the TSC. The ArB derives many of the measures of quality that it applies from methodology documents authored by the Methodology and Modeling Technical Committee, and the Vocabulary Technical Committee.

The scope of the ArB's work covers:

• Definition of a coherent enterprise architecture to support HL7 in its role as a consensus based standards development organization.
• Definition of an architectural framework for the development and maintenance of interoperability standards products.
• Communication of the value and benefits of application of the architectures to the organization.
• Conformity assessment for application of the architectures within the organization.
• Define quality criteria for WG’s to self-assess the validity and appropriateness of their work products and the manner within they are produced.
• Define the architectural properties of completeness, coherence, consistency, extensibility etc… for the relationships across and between HL7 work products.
• Requests from the TSC for definitional work or advice on the architectural aspects of work products and processes of the organization.
• Recommendation to the TSC of the organisational structure needed to implement the architecture successfully.
• Ongoing interaction with HL7 customers to promote and refine the architecture to ensure it is fit-for-purpose.
• Defines the conformity assessment processes and criteria that ensure the HL7 work products achieve stated levels of interoperability.
• Promotes the alignment criteria to optimize interoperability between systems that have their own discreet architectures.
• Tracks developments on relevant industry trends, techniques, and tooling that may apply to HL7 and provides recommendations to the TSC.