It is critical to ensure that taxonomies are maintained in a way that satisfies the current and future needs of an enterprise and provides maximum return on investment. To ensure taxonomies grow in a managed, predictable way by evolving within the context of an enterprise there is a need for taxonomy governance. While each enterprise is different, some fundamental requirements and basic governance practices are common when managing taxonomies and ontologies.
Controlled vocabulary concepts have a lifecycle. Concepts are constantly being added, edited, merged, retired, deleted, and are, in addition, changing states. A concept can be managed throughout its lifecycle in several statuses and furthermore it needs to go through diverse states in a lifecycle workflow. There are instances, a concept has been re-labeled, or concepts have been merged even after they have been approved.
The changes being made to the concepts in a controlled vocabulary would trigger an accompanying activity or audit log, which will note actions like what was changed when it was changed and by whom. This information on the evolutions of the concepts is critical for taxonomists. It offers evidence on what happened to a concept and when. Especially in times of taxonomy team expansion or knowledge transfers, concept status and associated audit log information are critical to understanding the state of the taxonomy as a whole.
The practical need for a backup, in case the underpinning technology crashes, makes versioning or archiving an active vocabulary a necessity. Another reason is organizational memory. Most taxonomy management systems have audit trails and changelogs, but it is often quite difficult to conceptualize something like restructuring entire taxonomy branches without a historical record to guide decision-making. Hence, it is vital to manage taxonomy and ontology version management.
There are many ways to manage the lifecycle and versioning of taxonomies and ontologies. A simple way would be to replicate the taxonomy or ontology and save it somewhere. However, inherent in this method is the danger of not knowing the location and access if there is employee turnover. If the taxonomy management system is integrated into another system, such as content or digital asset management system, the integration may provide the backup. Here the limitation is that the backup is only the last version to be output from the taxonomy management system.
Reporting is a good option if the taxonomy management system supports it. The ability to create a report of the full taxonomy structure and have this automatically output on a given date (the first of the month, for instance) and delivered to a documented and accessible location takes the manual burden off the taxonomy owners. The reporting process can be established as part of the overall taxonomy governance process and documented in a master taxonomy governance document.
In short, taxonomy and ontology lifecycle and version management are important for enterprises because it can reveal where the business has been and where it is going. More importantly, mission-critical processes may depend on the taxonomy for content tagging and pushes in a production environment. Moreover, if systems fail, the taxonomy still has work to do. Therefore, taxonomies and ontologies must be managed in a way that it can be recreated and restored.
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