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.

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The pragmatism with respect to standardization reflected in the EIS and EIFv2 will be an important attribute to these policies in the coming years as governments increasingly grapple with a trend that enterprise CIOs are currently working thru (and have a clear head start on). As I’ve participated in debates with various governments around the world on the need for standardization strategies to help the government as purchaser of technology achieve better interoperability in eGovernment systems, I’ve often seen conversations begin with an “inward” facing focus. The direction of the conversation is often related to aligning internal government systems with other internal government systems and ensuring that a coherent list of standards is in place to guide that internal alignment. I have often noted that this approach falls short in that it only considers half of the equation and, importantly, it leaves the citizen out in the dark. We have to ask, how do citizens plan to connect and communicate with their government?

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This article is co-authored by Susannah Sheppard, Consultant, and Richard Kemp, Senior and Commercial Technology Partner of Kemp Little LLP.

This comment highlights several of the issues we raised in a recently published article that discusses the recently released EIF v2, located at http://www.kemplittle.com/html/stay-posted/publications/short-lines/the-new-european-interoperability-framework.html?SESSIONFRONT=52d1177702a3926ecb525037e483b78a

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A number of questions were posed for the upcoming TalkStandards event. This contribution is responsive to the following question:

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?

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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?

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This article is co-authored by James Bryce Clark, General Counsel, and Laurent Liscia, Executive Director, of OASIS

Professor Ganslandt and several previous TalkStandards Forums describe the steady rain of updated policy guidelines on interoperability, standards and competition law that have fallen from the European Commission sky, over the past year.  As the sky clears a bit, it is a good time to look out form under our umbrellas, start assessing the path ahead, and plot out our pathways around the puddles.  Likely there still will be more clouds and rain on the horizon.  But several major themes have emerged, and can be seen more clearly as the bruine politique clears up, or at least abates for a few months:
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Consider that ‘EIFv2′ and ‘Guidelines for the Assessment of Horizontal Cooperation Agreements’ are codes and guidelines for types of standards processes that a government entity might find acceptable or reasonable for some purpose. In that respect these two share several common criteria.
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The topic of the forum this week is: EU standardization – from formalism to pragmatism?

The ‘question mark’ depicts an open ended question which leads to other questions:

• Was EU standardization based on formalism?
• Is it now based on pragmatism?
• What do these two terms mean anyway?
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Interoperability between ICT systems in the public sector is an important policy objective for the European Union. It is regarded an important means to solve conventional issues relating to digital communications between independent organizations and entities and enable seamless and cost-effective delivery of public services. Hopes are that is should also facilitate cross-border mobility. It is thus at the heart of the EU policy to create an integrated market and better European public services.

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Almost ten years ago I was involved in the process to write one of the first eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks, the eGIF work in the UK.
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