Large integration projects such as Flex often derail because it's difficult to get different groups to agree on metadata types.

Many agencies in Florida have already faced that issue once during efforts over the past few years to create a data-sharing system in each of the state's eight regions.

The new system will use the Federal Global Justice XML Data Model, a data-sharing standard developed by the U.S. Department of Justice, to provide data translation for data sharing, according to Mike Phillips, technical coordinator for the Flex project.

In addition to using the XML Data Model standard, IT developers must extract data definitions from each regional system to create a common statewide vocabulary for data exchanges, Phillips said.

While the regional groups had manually mapped the metadata needed to exchange information in the earlier projects, the IT unit determined that Flex required an automated data-mapping system to be sure that the statewide effort would be completed by March, 2007, as scheduled.