Standards: The Challenges

Standards Panel: Reflections on 10+ Years of Standards Work : 

Standards Panel: Reflections on 10+ Years of Standards Work Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN is supported by: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/sca-home-nation-tour-2008/ About This Talk This talk gives a brief summary of Brian Kelly’s involvement in standards work since the mid 1990s and reflections on these experiences. This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Resources bookmarked using ‘sca-home-nation-tour-2008' tag

About Me and About UKOLN : 

2 About Me and About UKOLN Brian Kelly: UK Web Focus: a Web advisory post based at UKOLN Funded by JISC and MLA to advise HE/FE and cultural heritage sectors Web developer since Jan 1993 Involved with JISC Standards work since 1995 UKOLN: National centre of expertise in digital information management Located at the University of Bath

The eLib Years : 

3 The eLib Years eLib Programme Large-scale JISC-funded programme Ran from 1996-2000? Standards for eLib projects documented: V 1.0 published in Feb 1995 / V 2.0 in Oct 1998 See <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/other/standards/> Document refers to: CGM • SGML IAFA/whois++ • Z39.50 URLs and URNs • VRML … “eLib projects are expected to provide a URL for public services, and a URN when these become stable“

NOF-Digi Experiences : 

4 NOF-Digi Experiences NOF-Digi: Lottery money to digitise and provide access to cultural resources Technical Advisory Service provided by UKOLN & AHDS Standards document: Based on eLib/DNER Standards document No longer available on People’s Network Site  Experiences: Valuable learning experience for cultural heritage orgs Standards sometimes too theoretical so ‘escape clause’ (migration strategy) developed – documented reasons for non-conformance & plans for migration to open standards needed in project reports

Developing A QA Framework : 

5 Developing A QA Framework QA Focus: JISC-funded project Provided by UKOLN and TASI/AHDS Aim: Develop QA framework for JISC development projects Provide recommendations on compliance regime for standards i.e. what does must mean? Findings: Uncertainty as to what is meant by an ‘open standard’ Diversity of deliverables, approaches, expertise, effort, …

Issues : 

6 Issues What is an open standard? RSS (1.0/2.0) • PDF MS Word What are the alternatives to open standards? Do nothing? Use something that’s not (yet) an open standard but isn’t owned by a company (‘my standard’) Invent an open standard Something else? What about adopting popular patterns of use: Web Services standards vs REST architectural approach (nb criticisms of WS* complexities & popularity of latter in Amazon)

Characteristics Of Open Standards : 

7 Characteristics Of Open Standards EMII-DCF characteristics of open standard: Open access (to the standard itself and to documents produced during its development) Open use (implementing the standard incurs no or little cost for IPR, through licensing, for example) Ongoing support driven by requirements of the user not the interests of the standard provider EU definition: The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization The standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge The intellectual property of the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis No constraints on the re-use of the standard

What Do We Really Want? : 

8 What Do We Really Want? Do we want: Open standards? The benefits promised by open standards: application- and device- independence, freedom from vendor pressures, …? Do we want: The cost savings promised by vendor-independent standards? The costs associated with deploying new standards? How do we reconcile: A user-centred approach to IT development? A developer-led approach to IT development?

Changing Environment : 

9 Changing Environment Experiences from mid-1990s: Identification of relevant standards Engagement of standards-development Consensus building; reflecting wide range of stake-holders … Recent experiences: Web 2.0 Using existing, well-established standards Commercial provision of (often popular) services

Responding To Change : 

10 Responding To Change Contextual model developed for JISC by UKOLN’s QA Focus project External Self assessment Penalties Learning Context: Compliance

Questions : 

11 Questions Issues which need to be addressed: Does the evidence demonstrate the success of current approaches to use of standards? Have we learnt from mistakes of the past (cf Coloured Book software)? Does the contextual model provide the flexibility needed? Is this an approach which can be used across a range of sectors?