FHIR IG QA process

Check list for publishing an IG:

this is the checklist for publishing an implementation guide for ballot by HL7.

You must know, at all times, 3 things:

• the [wiki url] for the wiki page the documents the IG approval
• [realm] - the realm code that is assigned to the IG e.g. uv or us - as documented on the wiki page
• [code] - the code that is assigned to the eg. core or adv-thing - as documented on the wiki page

When the NIB is submitted

• the IG must be approved by FMG
• check that realm on the NIB agrees with the realm as documented in the [wiki url], or FMG has approved a variation

Before Ballot Announcement

These check must be carried out before the ballot annoucement is made, and you must report to the ballot coordinator (Lynn) that you have met these goals. They must be carried out by whoever is nominated as the contact on the NiB

• The IG must be auto-building successfully on the CI build system (see IG Publisher Documentation) Note: it may be incomplete or have many errors at this point
• The IG must have a canonical URL of http://hl7.org/fhir/[realm]/[code]
• the IG must have a package name of hl7.fhir.[realm].[code]
• you must have decided what the version number will be, following the normal version numbering policy, and have agreed this with the FHIR product director
• the IG must use the standard HL7 FHIR IG template (or must be exempted by FMG)
• Check that the ballot announcement has the correct details for the IG, including getting the realm correct

Reasons for varying this exist, but must be approved by the FHIR product director on a case per case basis (noted on the IG approval page)

For publication

Before the specified FMG deadline for submission of Ig Content, do the following checks:

• The IG must have a canonical URL of http://hl7.org/fhir/[realm]/[code]
• the IG must have a package name of hl7.fhir.[realm].[code]
• the IG must use the standard HL7 FHIR IG template (or must be exempted by FMG)
• The IG must be auto-building successfully on the CI build system with few / no errors (see below)
• The agreed version number (see above) must be specified in all the conformance resources, and in the build control file as the version for the IG, and appearing as the specified version in the page header and/or footer
• The ballot status (e.g. STU1 Ballot 2) must be explicitly stated on the page header and/or footer
• All IG dependencies and core version reference must be literal versions, not the special values 'current' or 'dev'
• A set of history notes documented the significant change must be prepared. These may be in the IG, or separate for the FHIR Product director to publish

Errors

The IG publisher reports many errors in the file qa.html. This will will be published so that any reviewer of the specification can check the status of the IG. The FHIR product director will review the QA page before publishing, and discuss outstanding issues with the editors before publishing.

Implementation Guides can be (and have been) published with outstanding errors, either due to deficiencies in the tooling, or lack of time or authority on the part of the editors. The FHIR product director works with FMG to set allowable parameters for the errors. If there are too many unresolved errors, FMG may not allow the IG to go to ballot.