Every voyage needs a carefully planned roadmap to guide the traveler - and in FastTrack's journey toward a global 21st century-networked data-exchange infrastructure, the “Roadmap” is a key document. The FT/CSB “Roadmap” captures information from multiple workgroups and committees, and dozens of societies, and provides us with a high-level, prioritized list of initiatives for FastTrack's current and future development. The “Roadmap” provides substantial detail and specificity for priority projects over the next three years (2009-2011) and points to important projects for consideration further into the future.
What projects have been agreed to by the CISAC and FastTrack Boards of Directors for the current “Roadmap”? Priority projects for 2009 include three that are discussed in greater detail in this issue of FastTrack News: ISWC dissemination among societies and to third parties; cue sheet details via the CIS-Net AVI (both of which are continued from 2008); and tools facilitating the integration of CIS-Net with societies' legacy systems.
Key projects for 2010 include the creation of nodes for contributing agreements and territorial information for societies that don't have their own musical works node on the CIS-Net. This project will bring an important level of technical parity to CISAC societies on the FastTrack network. Another initiative will create a common reference source for documentation on digital sound recordings, containing all the metadata necessary to identify them unambiguously. Additional projects on the “Roadmap” include further enhancement of the statistics on the business benefits of the CISNet and FastTrack tools, and enhanced navigation on the CIS-Net through improved interface ergonomics.
A top project on the “Roadmap” for 2011 is a tool permitting users to match unidentified audio-visual performances with the cue sheet detail database, enabled through batch services and facilitated by the dissemination of the ISAN among societies.
Several of the initiatives on the “Roadmap” are multi-year projects. For example, there is wide agreement on the need for a cleanup and integrity process on many types of documentation to assure greater consistency and conflict management for various data sets. The project has already begun in 2008 and is expected to extend through 2010.
- Robbin Ahrold
Chair of the Communications Committee
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