Strategy Markup Language (StratML)
A Worldwide Web of Intentions, Stakeholders, and Results
Strategy Markup Language (StratML) Part 1 is an XML
vocabulary and schema for strategic plans. Its purposes include:
- Facilitate the sharing, referencing, indexing, discovery, linking, reuse,
and analyses of the elements of strategic plans, including goal and
objective statements as well as the names and descriptions of
stakeholder groups and any other content commonly included in strategic
plans.
- Enable the concept of "strategic alignment" to be realized in
literal linkages among goal and objective statements and all other
records created by organizations in the routine course of their
business processes.
- Facilitate the discovery of potential performance partners
who share common or complementary objectives.
- Facilitate stakeholder engagement, input, and feedback on strategic goals and objectives.
- Facilitate updating and maintenance of discrete elements of
strategic plans without requiring review and approval of the entire
plan through bureaucratic channels, thereby helping to make the
strategic planning process more agile and responsive to stakeholder
feedback and changing circumstances, thus helping to overcome the
tendency of strategic plans to become outdated "shelfware".
- Reduce the needless time, effort, inconsistencies, and delays
associated with maintaining data redundantly in myriad "stovepipe"
systems rather than referencing the authoritative sources.
- Enable U.S. federal agencies to comply with the provisions of subsections
202(b)(4) & (5)
and 207(d)
of the eGov Act, which respectively require them to:
- Work together to link their performance goals to key groups, including citizens,
businesses, and other governments, as well as internal Federal Government operations; and
- Adopt open standards (e.g., StratML) enabling the organization and categorization
of Government information in a way that is searchable electronically and interoperably
across agencies.
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Enable all organizations, worldwide, to apply those good practices.
On January 4, 2011, President Obama signed H.R. 2142, the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), into law as P.L. 111-352. Section 2 requires agencies to publish their strategic plans on their websites and section 10 requires them to publish their strategic and performance plans and reports in searchable, machine-readable format. StratML is such a format.
On January 14, 2019, President Trump signed into law the OPEN Government Data Act (OGDA) extending to all Federal records the requirement to make them open, machine-readable, and compliant with standardized schemas by default.
StratML Part 2 extends Part 1 to include the basic, minumum additional elements required for performance plans and reports, including stakeholder roles and performance indicators, in order to:
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Build upon Part 1 to enable the documentation of value chains leading to the realization of strategic goals and objectives, including desired outcomes as well as the inputs, processes, and outputs required to achieve them.
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Facilitate the identification of inputs and processes needed to produce planned outputs and desired outcomes.
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Enable the documentation and reporting of metrics associated with target and actual levels of inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes.
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Facilitate the sharing, referencing, indexing, discovery, linking, reuse, and analyses of the elements of performance plans and reports.
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Facilitate the tracking of actual results as compared to planned, target results in terms of usage of inputs, performance of processes, production of outputs, and realization of outcomes.
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Facilitate stakeholder feedback on the usages of inputs, production of outputs, and realization of outcomes affecting them.
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Enable value-added intermediaries to provide tools, products, and services supporting each of these purposes for the benefit of myriad communities of interest (stakeholder groups).
StratML Part 3 specifies additional elements addressing the data requirements implicit in GPRAMA as well as additional purposes.
CURRENT WORK & RESULTS
Hesham Ashraf has established a website to showcase his StratML authoring/editing form.
Ambar Shome and Pradeep Jain are exploring prospects for developing a StratML template/add-in for MS Word. In partnership with Owen Ambur, Ambar may also develop a browser-based StratML authoring/editing interface, as per this plan, which applies a version of the SratML stylesheet developed by Hesham.
Under direction from Owen Ambur and consistent with the technical development plan, Naval Sarda of Epicomm Technologies has managed development of a StratML-enabled query service at Search.AboutThem.info. Its architecture is documented here. Now that the initial iteration of the service is stable, enhancements are being considered in support of the conceptual development plan for the AboutThem.info domain. Feedback would be most welcome.
Since U.S. federal agencies have again failed to comply with section 10 of the GPRA Modernization Act with reference to the updates to their strategic plans due in Februray 2022, Owen Ambur is in the process of converting their plans to StratML format for them. Thus far he has completed the following:
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Department of Agriculture (USDA)
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Department of Commerce (DOC)
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Department of Education (ED)
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Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)
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Department of Homeland Security - FY2020 - 2024 Plan (DHS)
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Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD)
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Department of the Interior (DOI)
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Department of Justice (DOJ)
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Department of Labor (DOL)
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Department of State (DOS) & USAID
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Department of Transportation (DOT)
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Department of Treasury (TREAS)
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Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
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General Services Administration (GSA)
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Government Accountability Agency (GAO)
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Government Publishing Office (GPO)
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National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
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National Archives & Records Administration (NARA)
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National Science Foundation (NSF)
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
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Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
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Small Business Administration (SBA)
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Social Security Administration (SSA)
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
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Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
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Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
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Office of Government Ethics (OGE)
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U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC)
StratML Community Performance Report for 2024 - 2025 (SMLC2025) | There are more than 6,600 files in the StratML collection, all which can be queried in the AboutThem.info search service. Check out the alternative presentations Hesham's applied by Hesham Ashraf's stylesheet and by Pulkit Aggarwal's stylesheet.
Draft listings of:
StratML Glossary compiled by Owen Ambur using this XSD and stylesheet - Note the glossary is for informative purposes only.
The authoritative names and defintions of the elements are contained in the schemas themselves and are available in the documentation for
Part 1, Part 2 &
Part 3.
StratML Part 1, Strategic Plans
StratML Part 1, Strategic Plans, was published as an international standard ( ISO 17469-1) on February 11, 2015, and is available for purchase from ANSI. The schema itself is freely available for usage by anyone who cares to do so:
StratML Part 2, Performance Plans & Reports
Pending recruitment of enough nations to work on international standardization of Part 2, Performance Plans and Reports, in the ISO processes, revisions were moved through the ANSI process.
On January 19, 2017, ANSI approved revisions harmonizing Part 2 (ANSI/AIIM 22:2017) with the relatively minor changes made in Part 1 in the ISO process.
Schema -- The latest, officially approved version of the schema for Part 2 (ANSI/AIIM 22:2017) is available at ../references/PerformancePlanOrReport20160216.xsd | Documentation
On September 19, 2025, Owen edited the schema to correct the misplacement of the Submitter elements outside of the AdministrativeInformation elements and to make the Descriptor Name a child of Performance Indicator. Since Part 2 lost its status as an American national standard (ANSI/AIIM 22:2017) when AIIM dropped its standards program, neither the original nor this modified version have any official status. Nor has this modified version yet been tested. However, for those who may wish to do so, it is available at ../references/PerformancePlanOrReport20200919.xsd | Documentation
On January 23, 2020, Owen Ambur edited the schema to make that correction as well as to modify the definition of the element. Please note, however, that these modifictions have no official status in the StratML Community, much less ANSI or ISO: ../references/PerformancePlanOrReport20200123.xsd | Documentation
Stylesheet -- In the fall of 2018, Ibrahim Shah updated the stylesheet to accommodate the new Descriptor element in the Performance Indicators table. It is available at: ../forms/part2stratml.xsl
The previous version provided by Mario Madunic, Colin MacKenzie & Detlef Heyn is available at ../forms/part2stratmlOLD.xsl.
Mario and Anthony Bufort expressed interest in helping to update and maintain the stylesheet and Mario established a GitHub repository to manage work on it. Requests to join it should be addressed to him.
StratML Part 3, Additional Elements
StratML Part 3, Additional Elements, was approved and published as an AIIM best practice ( AIIM_BP_24-2014).
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Schema for StratML Part 3, August 21, 2014
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Screen shots showing how the Part 3 schema appears in an InfoPath form, November 23, 2012
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Data dictionary for Part 3 compiled on November 4, 2012 - PDF | DOCX (Word)
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The data requirements implicit in the GPRA Modernization Act (GPRAMA) are a central focus of Part 3.
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Proposed mapping of OMB Circular A-11, Section 210, guidance to the elements of StratML Part 3
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Proposed mapping of the elements of the Performance Data Standard (PDS) for the Performance.gov site to StratML Part 3.
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This rendition of GPRAMA, dated February 7, 2012, contains selected screen shots from an InfoPath form showing how requirements of the Act might be met in the strawman draft schema for Part 3 - HTML | PDF
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On August 15, 2017, Owen Ambur made draft revisions to the schema for Part 3 to harmonize with changes made to Part 2 in the ANSI process.
On December 12, 2017, Owen generated documentation of the revised draft schema and posted it here.
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