TaxMap Goes Head to Head with Google
Papers, presentations, etc. appear below that give you the history, details and methodology behind TaxMap. The topic map that the IRS uses at its help desk.
I can't improve on those first hand accounts so rather than the usual topic map rant, I wanted to take another tack. I want you experience that value of topic maps for yourself.
First, open up two (2) browser windows. In the first one, load TaxMap. In the second window, load Google. Ready?
First topic (sorry!) is "alimony." Use the search box in TaxMap and you get eight "hits." Try the same search with Google, "alimony site:irs.gov." Hmmm, 3,300 "hits." And they are poorly organized.
Second topic is "child support." In TaxMap, that topic is conveniently located on the related topics bar to your right. In Google, well, "child support site:irs.gov." Err, 4190 "hits." If you are trying to keep up with someone using TaxMap, you are falling behind.
Third topic is "Divorced or Separated Spouses/Parents," which is also on the related topics bar for child support. In Google, you get 1,730 "hits." I hope your day job isn't finding answers to tax questions using Google.
These are not "cooked" examples. Pick any topic in TaxMap and compare an irs.gov domain limited search with Google.
If you are answering the phone and delivering high quality information to tax payers, which one would you choose?
Would your agency, enterprise, organization benefit from high quality data delivery like you have just experienced?
Histories, presentations by TaxMap principal architects, Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb:
- 2010-03-08. "Global Information Access. Local Information Management. The Story of IRS Tax Map", with Steve Newcomb, XML Special Interest Group and Morgan Stanley, New York, March 8, 2010.
- 2007-03-21. Five Years of Tax Map: A Topic Maps Application at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service: Lessons Learned, March 21, 2007, Topic Maps 2007, Oslo, Norway.
- 2006-03-08. Topic Mapping: An inventor's perspective. History, Present and Future. Illustrated with TaxMap, a Topic Map implementation at the IRS, Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia XML Users Group.
- 2005-04-07. TaxMap, A Topic Maps Application, [In French]. XML-France, Paris, France.
- "The IRS Tax Map", Michel Biezunski, presented at XML Europe 2003 Conference, May 5-8, 2003, London, UK.