Early nominations for the Mashable Open Web awards are in and the 500 nominees make fascinating reading.
Apart from the nominees themselves, it is interesting to see the categories for the choice of ‘Open Web’. By referring to ‘Open’ in context of the Web, one would expect to see a W3C standards based discussion but ‘Open Web’ is a vague term which suits well for getting nominations, as the list clearly illustrates.
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Along with Open source and Open standards, we now have a new phrase; i.e. Open Government.
What does Open Government imply for standards?
Let’s take a step back. Prior to 1999, I used to work for an ERP vendor. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a complex class of software that is typically intended to manage all the functions of a company (such as Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Billing and so on). Inspite of their complexity, there was a mad scramble to install ERP systems which was mainly motivated by the Y2K deadline.
Smart Grid technology can enable substantial savings of energy, decrease cost and increase reliability. ZigBee Alliance technology currently has a momentum and is being selected as the interoperability standard on several continents.
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In a previous post about the future of standards, – I mentioned that standards are boring but a necessary part of ICT strategy. Having said that, the future of standards is an interesting space – especially due to the management of the standards setting process involved ex. the complexity on a global scale
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The openEHR Foundation is an international non-profit foundation founded in 2000, with the ambition to make interoperable and lifelong electronic health records (EHR) a reality and improve medical care in the information society through the open standard specification openEHR.
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Background:
This blog is a summary of my discussion at the talkstandards forum last week in Brussels. I see both the talk and the event as the continuation of a debate – both online and offline.
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[Comments welcome!]
This version 2009-05-07
Domain: eHealth standards, see eHealth standardization map http://www.talkstandards.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/map-ehealth-sso.jpg [accurate?]
The openEHR Foundation is an international non-profit foundation founded in 2000, with the ambition to make interoperable and lifelong electronic health records (EHR) a reality and improve medical care in the information society through the open standard specification openEHR. The foundation is dedicated to the development of specifications, open source software and tools for the creation of adaptable health computing systems and patient-centric electronic health records. The focus in openEHR is not on how different systems exchange data with each other, but on architecture, reference models and especially archetype models for standardization of data, irrespective of the application of such data. The term openEHR is used both for the foundation and its published work. The first version, openEHR 1.0, was released in February 2006, and the latest version, openEHR 1.0.2 was published on New Year’s Eve in 2008. [extent to which openEHR and other SSOs overlap? Specific niche for openEHR?]
OpenEHR was founded by University College London and Ocean Informatics Pty ltd from Australia and the board of the foundation is composed of four members from these two organizations. Membership in the foundation is open to anyone, and by now openEHR has more than 700 members from more than 70 countries. Membership is free of charge although the foundation is actively searching for sponsors.
Standardization is considered necessary by openEHR, however the openEHR view is that traditional standards setting processes with committees do not have a future. [facts to support this argument? evidence or facts would be useful] Instead, a development process aligned to the open source model is needed, with continual and open review where anyone can request changes. Therefore, openEHR is published in official versions which the users continually review, but with defined rules for how changes in the specifications are to be made. OpenEHR can be considered to consist of three types of content: specification documents, archetypes and software. [motives for this cooperation in standard and cooperation in application?] The latter two builds on the specifications. Thus a new version of openEHR implies the revision of the set of specifications. All the specifications are developed and managed by a project group within the foundation. However, each specification typically is the work of a specific working group. Anyone in the foundation may suggest changes to a specification, and when such a proposal is made it is discussed and developed until a consensus has been reached among the members of the foundation. Any such changes are then reviewed and documented by the Architecture Review Board consisting of 7 members before the revision of the specification is implemented by the project group.
All IPR to the contributions to openEHR is owned by [transferred to?] the foundation and all material is made publicly available for free under licenses where the only terms are that the user may not use the material out of context or modify it in such a way that it may damage the openEHR foundation. The stance of the foundation on IPR is that all components and specifications have to be in open source format; otherwise complete interoperability among all the complex systems in the area will never be achieved. [facts to support this position?] [other IPR policies considered for openEHR?]
OpenEHR continually cooperate with other organizations such as CEN and ISO. The openEHR specifications build upon various definitions and specifications in standards from CEN and ISO – while CEN in turn have adopted standards based on openEHR. A large international project of harmonization is also underway within ISO to develop specifications for how data following the openEHR standard should be exchanged in messages following the HL 7 version 3 standard.
OpenEHR is also cooperating with other organizations, for example the development of terminology by the IHTSDO (International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation). [Which organizations are most important to cooperate with for the success of the openEHR standards]
As rather new, the openEHR open standard has not yet been widely implemented. [facts about use would be extremely useful] Various evaluations of openEHR are however ongoing in one or many regions within about ten countries.
Key success factors
Free membership of openEHR creates incentives for wide participation, especially from motivated individuals.
The set leadership of the foundations, although somewhat undemocratic, provides a coherent leadership vision.
The open development of standards provides swift reactions to technological progress and ensures that standards will meet the market demands.
Focus on interoperability. This enhances the ability of openEHR to respond and adapt to technological developments.
[additional factors?]
On 2 June 2006, the Danish parliament (the Folketing) unanimously adopted Parliamentary Resolution B103 on the use of open standards for software in the public sector. The Resolution instructs the Government to ensure that the public sector’s use of information technology, including the use of software, should be based on open standards.
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I have been meaning to do this blog for a while but got sidetracked due to other things.
In spite of my initial skepticism about the open web foundation, I have been enjoying participating in the Open Web foundation
For some time now, and especially after the recent debate about the Open Cloud, I have felt that there should be a need to rethink standardization going forward.
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Like many people, I did not think highly of the Open Cloud manifesto episode last week and now that some resolution seems to have come of it with the apology from CCIF, it’s time to leave the CCIF manifesto episode behind to the wider issues.
I have been trying to take a pragmatic view about the current and future role of standards for some time, albeit from the perspective of mobility where the issue has existed for a while now.
Standardization for the Cloud offers an opportunity to rethink standards themselves since many of the older paradigms do not apply in the new world dominated by the Cloud (or rather they become irrelevant/commodities).
So, much like the parable of new wine in old wineskins, there is little point in framing new discussions in context of the old.
Let me explain.
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