Andy Updegrove recently posted an interesting article on his site – consortiuminfo.org - regarding recent objections to the new British “Procurement Policy Note – Use of Open Standards when specifying ICT requirements”. (LINK)
The new policy “recommends that Government departments should wherever possible deploy open standards in their procurement specifications” and defines an Open Standard as a standard made “irrevocably available on a royalty free basis”.
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On wednesday February 23, Talkstandards.com held an online open forum to discuss a number of issues related to recent EU policy developments, building upon our December 22nd mini-event “European Interoperability Strategy“. Two communications released late last year by the European Commission related to e-Government and standardization – the European Interoperability Framework version 2 and updated Guidelines for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements – were central to the discussion, particularly the inclusion of FRAND licensing within the EIF specification of a open standard.
In what follows I try to respond to two forum questions posed by the convenor;
Question 1: From Objectives to Action: The EIFv2 and EIS provide normative guidance on what needs to be done to foster interoperability, particularly across the semantic and organizational layers. But how can Member State governments meet these objectives in practice?
Question 2: The implications of Open Specifications; The EIF v2 sets out attributes of “open specification” as well as a comment which appears to give public administrations some discretion to reference specifications that do not meet these openness criteria “if open specifications do not exist or do not meet functional interoperability needs.”( Section 5.2.1) How does this differ from the language in EIF v1 and what are the practical implications of this difference in language?
Tomorrow (May 25th) the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) kicks off in Amsterdam. This is the 17th edition of the biannual event which began in 1978 and will feature around 280 keynote speakers from business, government and academia.
Since I first got involved with eGovernment projects in the mid-nineties I have been encouraging governments that I have been working with to look towards international standards as a route to solving system interconnect challenges, an important step on the path to providing more predictable and useful services to the citizens and businesses that they work with.
More recently, along with everybody else in my field, I have found myself increasingly involved in eGovernment projects that are using Web2.0 technologies (sometimes called Gov2.0) to improve the way that they work with their constituents.
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Recently, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra demonstrated a Windows Azure service built on Department of Labour teaching data. Ars Technica says:
Further to these, Microsoft announced a new Azure service now included in the CTP. Codenamed “Dallas,” the new service gives developers the ability to discover, purchase, and manage data subscriptions within Azure.
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Several reasons suggest that is advisable to shift focus in political strategies across the world from production to consumption. This involves measures that rely more on markets and less on regulation in order to realize the full potential of egovernment.
For a background see “Egovernment in Perspective”, http://www.talkstandards.com/?p=2273
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With this week’s high-level EU conference and ministerial meeting, egov2009.se, just completed, there is good reason to put some of the policy issues in perspective.
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Talkstandards.com had an Open Forum on eGovernment and ICT standardization yesterday. The discussion focused on eGov policies and how eGov strategies can contribute to the development and innovation of the public sector.
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With the understanding that well-connected government can enhance efficient and effective delivery of services to citizens Governments around the world - have become increasingly interested in assuring that their ICT systems are built and maintained in a manner that results in the highest levels of interoperability, data access and interchange, and “digital sovereignty.”
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