This is the first in a series of articles in which contributor Stacy Baird will analyse the role of governments in standards setting initiatives which will be posted on a bi-weekly basis – Editor
This series is substantially drawn from an article I wrote for the Stanford Law and Policy Review (Volume 18, Issue 1 (2007)). As we move into a time of predictibly heightened interest in government intervention in IT standards and interoperability with the deployment of cloud technologies, I find it interesting to once again consider the arguments of this article.
The explosive growth of the role of IT in our society and as a component of our economy has dramatically elevated the importance of IT interoperability. Interoperability may be achieved in a number of ways, through intellectual property licensing and cross-licensing, relatively simple technical means (for instance, in information technologies and consumer electronics converters and translators are commonplace in both software and hardware), industry collaboration with companies working to facilitate interoperability among their products, through a company designing its product to interoperate with the products of other companies, and through consulting services that facilitate interoperability among otherwise non-interoperable technologies. And indeed, interoperability between modern technologies is often a far simpler task than during previous eras of technological evolution wherein inventors were limited by physical characteristics and mechanical interactions. Further to this point, in light of Web 2.0 technologies and cloud computing, interoperability and the use of widely accepted standards to achieve that interoperability are at the core of both innovation and implementation.