The current:

Following the example of Boulder, many other cities are watching the experiences in Boulder and the picture is not that clear as we see in “Can (should) a city build a smart grid?”.

Meanwhile, countries like India are proceeding with parallel efforts optimised to the local ecosystem – “IEEE Launches Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Project in India”.

Meanwhile, the standards themselves are extending beyond the home to domains like electric vehicles – “ANSI Electric Vehicles Standards Panel Seeks Participants to Develop …”.

Reflecting the maturity of smart grids, we now have testing initiatives for Smart Grid projects (“NEMA Unveils Smart Grid Testing Scheme”), and even scenarios like how to manage taxation when the world of Smart Grid arrives (“Tendril Networks Demand Response Solution for the Smart Grid“)

And the future is equally complex:

Security inevitably features in future scenarios. In “Are we really thinking enough about smart grid security?”, new data from Pike Research suggests that spending on cybersecurity measures for the smart grid will reach $1.3 billion by 2015. Primary smart grid security related concerns include: the need to secure customer data, the need to secure the grid itself and the need to protect transmissions and communications.

Performance feedback is another active domain in keeping with the ‘two way’ philosophy of a smart grid especially the chance to share pitfalls and best practices with others “The smart grid’s missing ingredient: performance feedback“.

And finally we have sensors which will play an important role within the Smart Grid space especially with a post ipv6 world. (“New Ipv6 protocol from IETF will boost ‘Internet of Things’“).

Here, we see attempts to standardise “For example in September 2008, Cisco co-founded the IP for Smart Objects alliance (IPSO), an industry grouping of 57 member organisations with the mission of defining and shaping the Internet of Things.”

So, smart grid standards are evolving rapidly and in many directions.

But will standardization and governments drive the evolution of Smart Grids?

OR

Will innovation, industry and market needs will drive specific directions of growth within smart grids.

This week passed was a quite surprising week in standards with a proposed scale down of the budgets for data.gov and other sites, yet another cloud standards body launched, plus other interesting views and news from the world of standards. Please feel free to leave any comments/suggestions in the comment section below.

WEB STANDARDS

‎• The Story Behind W3C Adopting HTML5

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the body which looks after web standards was at a time far behind XHTML 2.0 as they wanted the web to be standardized and be more stricter as well. But what browser vendors observed was that no one was doing XHTML properly, and very few people were doing XHTML development. Furthermore, the few that were doing it weren’t doing it properly. So, the standard had no relevance when no one did it properly.

‎• W3C Issues Report on Web and Television Convergence

Today, W3C publishes a report that summarizes the discussion among the 77 organizations that participated, including broadcasters, telecom companies, cable operators, OTT (over the top) companies, content providers, device vendors, software vendors, Web application providers, researchers, governments, and standardization organizations active in the TV space.

‎• Data.gov in crisis: the open data movement is bigger than just one

In the next few months, Data.gov, along with a number of other data-related sites of the government such as USAspending.gov and Apps.gov, are slated to be shut down due to budget cuts. The current annual budget of $37 million will be reduced to $2 million.

‎• WoodWing releases Open Format for Interactive Publications (ofip)

Zaandam, The Netherlands – WoodWing Software, a leading supplier of cross-media publishing solutions and an innovation leader in the tablet publishing market, announced today that the data format used in its Tablet Publishing Solution is now available as an open format, free of charge.

‎• Multi-stakeholder model likely for internet regulation: Berners-Lee

A multi-stakeholder model, involving organisations like the United Nations, appears to be the likely solution to increasing calls for regulating the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, said in Hyderabad.

”At the moment a lot of discussion is going on whether international governance should be done through different countries or if it should be done independently,” Berners-Lee told journalists at the 20th International World Wide Web conference. ”I think probably we will end up with a multi-stakeholder system where some of it comes from organisations like United Nations and foundations.”

MOBILE STANDARDS

‎• OMB Official: Mobile Tech Security Standards are Certain

A White House official who oversees government use of mobile technologies says the technology is “not secure,” and standards are being developed that will increase security.

Janice Nall, e-gov portfolio manager for the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was speaking at the 2011 Government Web and New Media Conference in Washington, D.C. when she said, mobile technologies have “not kept up with the wired industry in terms of security” and “are about ten years behind.”

‎• Reality Check: Standing up for standards

The terrible human tragedy arising from the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan could have been even worse if it were not for a little known telecoms standard. In Japan, mobile operators NTT DoCoMo Inc. and SoftBank used a warning system, based on the Cell Broadcast Service (CBS) standard, to provide many of their subscribers with a valuable few seconds of notice of the impending earthquake and then the resulting tsunami.

In the event of a strong earthquake, the warning system is triggered by seismological readings detecting fast-moving p-waves generated by the earth tremor, which occur prior to the impact of slower-moving, but far stronger, s-waves. Using CBS technology, the system sends out a text message to everyone with a compatible handset, giving them a few seconds notice in which to try to find some kind of shelter. Ahead of the subsequent tsunami an alert was also broadcast to all compatible phones in coastal regions to give people a chance to either leave the area or move to higher ground.

‎• FCC proposes rules for cell phones signal boosters

In addition to mandating that carriers allow data roaming, the Federal Communications Commission used its regular meeting this week to propose tighter regulations for cell phone signal boosters.

‎• Govt plans energy efficiency labels for mobile phone chargers

(India): “We are working on introducing star (energy) labelling system for mobile phone chargers. It will be voluntary (for the makers of chargers) in the beginning and later, we plan to make it mandatory,” a senior Power Ministry official said.

‎• NFC Gets Google Endorsement, Looks to Disrupt

Google announced yesterday that it has joined the NFC Forum, an organization committed to tackling standards and technological hurdles associated with near field communications (NFC).

The announcement comes just weeks after CTIA Wireless highlighted the technology, with experts saying that contactless mobile-based payments and transactions are on the brink of becoming a reality in 2011. Already most major OEMs have announced plans to begin embedding NFC-capable chips in their mobile phones.

CLOUD STANDARDS

‎• IBM paints the cloud-scape blue

IBM has backed the creation of a standards body that comprises 40 “leading cloud organisations” but none of its main rivals in the battle to dominate the next big thing in computing.

‎‎• IEEE Targets Cloud Interoperability Standards

The venerable IEEE is wading into the chaotic and roiled realm of cloud computing, seeking to set standards through a cloud computing initiative launched Monday that will focus on cloud interoperability.

‎• Using Social Media to Drive Sales, Marketing and Customer Service

The P2301 working group will provide a portability roadmap for cloud vendors, service providers, and their customers. Its work will result in a standard that will allow users to know they are buying resources and services that meet standardized definitions and measures, with the means to move them from cloud to cloud, Diamond said.

‎• Air transport industry launches first ‘community’ cloud

SITA, the air transport IT specialist, has announced plans to launch a community cloud designed specifically for the air transport industry, in an effort to cut costs and improve efficiencies.

‎• Huawei Joins DMTF Board of Directors

Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF), the organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on systems management standards development, validation, promotion and adoption, today announced that Huawei, a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications network solutions around the world, has been elected to the DMTF Board of Directors. The addition of this international company solidifies DMTF’s expanding global presence in the IT industry. Huawei joins AMD, Broadcom, CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix Systems Inc., EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and VMware to continue DMTF’s momentum in driving IT management standards and initiatives.

‎• The Cloud and Cybersecurity

As part of federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s 25-point plan to reform federal IT management announced last December, federal agencies must adopt a “cloud-first” policy that requires them to move three applications to the “cloud” over the next 12 to 18 months. Agencies must identify the three “must move” services within three months, move one of those services to the cloud within 12 months and the remaining two within 10 months.

PRIVACY STANDARDS

‎• Ed. Dept. Proposes New Student Data Privacy Rules

In its effort to clarify student data privacy rules for researchers and education officials alike, the U.S. Department of Education proposed several changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, on Thursday and named its first chief privacy officer.

‎• Justice Department Opposes Changes To Electronic Privacy Law

Privacy protections “must advance with technology” or privacy will “gradually erode as technology advances.” So said the Senate Judiciary Committee — in 1986, the year that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was passed.

‎• Business calls for harmonised rules on data protection

One of the main calls from businesses has been for simplified, harmonised rules. But the current law governing the area is a directive as opposed to a regulation. This means member states can interpret how it should be implemented, leading to a patchwork of standards across the bloc. The data protection authority in Germany considers IP addresses to be personal data, for example. This is not the case elsewhere.

‎• Smartphone Apps Under Fire

New Jersey prosecutors are examining whether or not some smartphone apps violate user privacy standards. Such apps may go head-to-head with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by failing to disclose information regarding asking users to submit personal information. Information collected could be revealed to third party advertisers.

‎• Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission for the …

The RFID Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) Framework sets an example for industry in Europe and in the world by taking legitimate privacy concerns of people seriously and proactively addressing them. It effectively creates a win-win situation for business and consumers, as well as a pragmatic way to ensure safeguards for privacy. More specifically, it provides its future users with a comprehensive description of what should be done to deliver RFID applications that are compliant with the EU data protection Directive of 1995 and the ePrivacy Directive of 2002.

‎• California Lawmaker Touts Do-not-track Bill

State Senator Alan Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat, and Consumer Watchdog, a privacy group that supports the bill, detailed the bill in a press conference Monday. Lowenthal originally introduced a placeholder bill in February, then amended the bill on March 24 to include the new do-not-track language.

“Nearly 80 percent of Californians use the Internet and nearly 45% use Facebook — including myself,” Lowenthal said in a statement, “But today millions of Californians are unaware that their online behavior is being tracked; their data collected and sold to advertisers.”

Lowenthal’s legislation, designated as a computer spyware bill, would direct the California attorney general to adopt regulations requiring Web companies that collect personal data to allow users to opt out of data collection and online tracking.

The regulations would also require Web companies doing business in California to inform users of their collection and tracking efforts, and it would allow civil lawsuits against companies that fail to comply with the regulations.

‎• IPTC Releases rNews Standard Draft for Embedding Metadata in …

Publishers large and small struggle to make sure that search engines and social media sites find their stories and refer to them appropriately. They want to provide highly targeted adverts while dealing with users who are opposed to the privacy implication of sharing the personal data necessary to accomplish that. How can they build web pages with news stories where the components of the story are machine-readable, as well as human readable?

The IPTC has taken a step to solving this problem with the release of the first draft of the rNews standard. Details of rNews are available at http://dev.iptc.org/rNews.

SMART GRID STANDARDS

‎• Should we stop the smart grid to wait for standards?

It’s fashionable to criticize utilities for moving too slow. Is it possible they are actually moving too fast instead? Key smart grid standards are only now starting to take shape. Yet many projects — especially in the U.S. — are well underway using immature standards or none at all.

‎• Mapping the Move to ZigBee 2.0

Moving from the current wireless standard ZigBee to the next-generation ZigBee standard dubbed “Smart Energy Profile 2.0″ is going to be a very big deal for the utilities, smart meter makers and other technology providers involved. About three months from now, we’re going to know a lot more about how big of a deal it’s going to be.

‎• NIST seeks convergence of smart grid interface spec

NIST leads efforts to drive standards for smart grids by seeking convergence on separate efforts by EPRI and the USNAP Alliance on a modular interface spec for linking consumer devices to a smart grid.

‎• Electric cars likely to spark new ‘smart grid‘

WASHINGTON — Entire industries grew up around gasoline-powered cars, ranging from the ubiquitous filling stations to fast-food restaurants along highway exits. Similarly, the rise of electric cars probably will transform more than just the automobile.

‎• Electric car makers fight over plug standard

A tussle between different designs of plugs used in prototype electric cars has derailed an attempt to create a common European standard, highlighting industrial jealousy as the sector attempts to broach the mainstream.

The EU’s “focus group on electro-mobility” was set to adopt a standard type of plug for recharging European manufactured electric cars by 31 March, but an argument between rival designs scuppered

‎• Lack of Technical Standards Could Hinder Utilities’ Readiness for …

The second comeback of the electric vehicle (EV) in little more than a decade has a much greater likelihood of success, and many in the industry believe that it will have a transformative effect on driving habits as well as the automotive and electric power industries. To prepare for the arrival of EVs in neighborhoods across the country, utilities in the United States will need to design and implement a complex network of information technology (IT) systems to support data analytics, smart charging management, and customer information management. However, according to a recent report from Pike Research, many utilities could be unprepared to deal with the impact of EVs on the electrical grid, due to a lack of standards for sharing information between utilities and external systems.

‎• White House Releases Updated Energy R&D Strategy

Last week, President Obama delivered a major speech on energy policy at Georgetown University and announced the release of the White House’s new “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future.”

In terms of promoting clean energy innovation through research and development (R&D), President Obama defended these investments in his speech by noting:

So a clean energy standard will help drive private investment in innovation. But I want to make this point: Government funding will still be critical. Over the past two years, the historic investments my administration has made in clean and renewable energy research and technology have helped private sector companies grow and hire hundreds of thousands of new workers.

Secondly, I would like to comment of what Dieter wrote On Page 97:

The executive summary of the report by Dieter Ernst can be found here:
www.talkstandards.com/indigenous-innovation-and-globalization/

“8. The report highlights two important drawbacks of China’s standards and innovation policy. First, elaborate lists of products and technologies that are constructed to assess compliance with China’s standardization and certification requirements may have significant negative impacts. These lists risk being quickly outdated and bypassed. Even more important for China’s objective to foster indigenous innovation is that such control lists focus on existing technologies, rather than on the future innovations that they are designed to promote.

Second, in its current form, China’s policy on Information Security Standards and Certification could create unintended disruptive side effects for the upgrading of China’s standardization system. An extensive scope of regulation and a lack of coordination between Chinese security policies and trade policies could create potentially serious trade disputes.”

Comments of mine:

On Dieter’s first point, if the point is regarding the ICT industry, I agree with the point–it is right. But if it is regard the traditional industry, it may not be. I believe that lists built by government include not only ICT industry.

On the second point, I found the standard issued by the Ministry of Public Security, entitled – GA/T 708-2007 Information Security Technology- Architecture Framework of Security Classification Protection for Information System, where T (following the GA/) indicates voluntary.

I took a quick look at the standard, and I got an impression that the standard is a system security standard for any information system construction. The main goal is to prevent against attacks from hackers, natural disasters like fire, etc, by technical measures and to provide recommendations to the constructors of such kind of information system. The idea to set up the standard is affected by NIST SP800, and the Information Assurance Technical Framework (IATF), 3.0, NSA (National Security Agency).  This is indicated in the GA/T 708 reference material.

I could find no evidence to suggests that such a voluntary standard could potentially create dispute in international trade. I also believe most of the experts in information security area will agree to set up similar standard for the information system security reason, even the experts in US. NIST SP800 and IATF 3.0 of NSA show that. For my understanding, the certification related is also voluntary.

Please use the following link to join the discussion
www.talkstandards.com/indigenous-innovation-and-globalization/

“We need to start thinking about different business models for utilities because otherwise the traditional paradigm just doesn’t work anymore.”

In this exclusive interview, Kevin Doran, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Energy & Environmental Security (CEES) discusses the future of smart grids with TalkStandards.

Kevin Doran is a senior research fellow to the School of Law’s Center for Energy and Environmental Security-an interdisciplinary research and policy center. Professor Doran is also the Faculty Director for the Colorado Renewable Energy Research Collaboratory’s Carbon Management Center (CMC). Professor Doran is the author and co-author of over a dozen articles and book chapters on climate and energy law and policy.

As an introduction to the smart grid week and the events being hosted, could you perhaps provide a broad overview of the key goals of smart grid?

- The difficult thing in understanding the key goals of smart grid is there are so many constituency groups that have very different perspectives, that are not entirely compatible, on what those goals are.  Essentially there are 4 main constituencies: the utilities, consumers, third party entrants (edge service providers to the smart grid), and those interested in overall system optimisation, such as public policy decision makers.

- From the utility perspective, the goal is obviously want a more efficient load management system for their product, which is electricity. But this is not entirely compatible with the idea of greater demand side management in the Smart Grid, which means the utilities would be selling less of their product to the consumers, but desirable for consumers as it means less money for them.

- The edge service providers want information they can use for marketing purposes and this may be at odds with what the consumers want in terms of privacy. It may similarly be at odds with what the utilities want as they may want to be the bottle neck for the information. All of this is playing out within the umbrella of somebody who is trying to optimise the entire system and at this stage is unclear how all this really plays out.

- One way to answer your question is, that it really does depend on the perspective that you are looking at Smart Grid from and those perspectives are not always compatible in terms of their objectives.

You mention the diverging interests of the utilities and consumers. With key issues such as the greater use of home produced solar electricity, which presents both reduced demand and greater competition to utilities, is it possible to align these interests?

- There are measures which you can take to align the interests, by which I mean there are economic instruments that you can use so that the utility isn’t penalised through demand-side management program. If say a utility is selling 100 units of electricity and they engage in a demand-side management system which reduces that to 90, there is the possibility them going back to the utilities commission and saying “our demand-side management program was very effective in reducing electricity usage in our service territory by 10%, we would like to be compensated in some fashion for that electricity that wasn’t sold”. This is known as decoupling which is what has been implemented in California and other places.

- But the truth is that all this does is put the cost back onto consumers for the electricity that they didn’t consume, which can only be taken so far and for so long before it stops making sense. At a certain threshold, which we are nowhere near meeting when it comes to demand-side management programs, the basic model stops making as much sense when it comes to utilities being incentivised to sell more of their product and you simply cannot fictionalise a reduction of half of their product and passing the costs onto consumes and having it make any sense.

- We need to start thinking about different business models for utilities because otherwise the traditional paradigm just doesn’t work anymore.

Following on with the issue of divergent interests, ICT firms, which come from a very different background from that of traditional utilities, will play a key role in the Smart Grid future. Is it possible to introduce their culture on innovation into electricity distribution?

- It would require a sea change in terms of the perspectives the utilities have. We’re starting to see some of that with some utilities in some areas. But overall utilities, particularly rural electric cooperatives and smaller municipal utilities, are very traditional entities. They’re not going to be doing a vast amount of R&D or branching out into selling Smart Grid data to marketers. It’s not a comfort area and they’re not interested in doing it, and even if they were, they wouldn’t do it competently. So, I don’t see in the near future utilities becoming real bell weathers of innovation in electricity and Smart Grid space. It is largely being driven by ICT companies, such as Microsoft and Google.

- It’s important to step back and think about the fact that Smart Grid is a fairly simple idea. It’s simply the traditional grid with an information overlay on top of it and bi directional communication from the utility to the consumer and from the consumer back to the utility and then potentially to other third parties. That isn’t a revolutionary idea, or an idea that is hard to understand. So there can be lots of innovation with how you use that information, but the basic concept of Smart Grid itself is a fairly simple, straight forward concept.

However, is it fair to say that while Smart Grid is a simple idea, there are many complicated issues between conceiving that idea and realising the end goal?

- There are issues such as cyber security and interoperability which NIST is handling through their standards setting process There are also issues such as privacy, which is a huge concern particularly in Europe but it’s becoming more so here in the United States, where you have this extremely granular data which can be use directly to show many intimate detail of you private life from within your home, or you can use extremely sophisticated data extrapolation techniques to figure this stuff out. And the whole idea is that this would be extremely valuable information, both from a marketer’s perspective and law enforcement purposes, such as large scale data mining and profiling of that information. There are lots of sinister applications to which that information could be put.

- If you consider interoperability, we have something like 50 different Advance Meter Interface (AMI) companies here in the US. They are all deploying different types of technologies using different protocols, none of which necessarily communicate with one another. This is not an ideal scenario. So it’s important that all of these things fit together in a cohesive fashion and can talk to each other and we really don’t have that kind of standards regime in place as of yet, though we’re beginning to get our acts together with the NIST process.

Related to the issue of interoperability, is there a need for a more top-down standardisation initiative?

- We have a top-down initiative from NIST to develop standards. You could think of it working two ways: NIST being the organiser of the standards setting process – a top-down governmental-led effort which was mandated by the energy, independence and securities act of 2007 – but this top-down framework also galvanises a bottom-up process where you have numerous different types of companies which feed into that top-down framework and give their input into the standards setting process. At the end of the day the idea is to have interoperability standards that NIST has organised with the broad input from utilities, ICT companies and other interested parties which will be handed over to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) whose responsibility will be to promulgate rules that take those standards and put them into regulatory form.

So would you say that this balance between a top-down approach and actively fostering involvement from all stakeholders is the key?

- There are some criticisms that that approach is not rapid enough and innovative enough to really accommodate all of the issues that are associated with Interoperability and Smart Grid. But thus far, no one has come up with an alternative to the process that NIST is leading.

In the white paper “Smart Grid Development in Colorado: Challenges and Opportunities”, you describe Smart Grid data as a double-edged sword in relation to issues related to privacy.

- NIST itself describes privacy as the Achilles heel of Smart Grid, which is a wonderfully colourful and telling expression from a government agency. And to the extent that smart grid is useful derives from the informational overlay over the traditional electricity grid and it’s only useful to the extent that that information is capable of being parsed and thereby granular and allowing lots of optimisation decisions to happen from both the utility and the customer end. But the more that capability occurs, due to the granularity of the information, at the same you get the potential for drastic invasions of privacy based on the granularity of that data. Thus you can’t have one without the other to the extent that the Smart Grid is capable of achieving its objectives it’s also going to be a huge vector for privacy invasions.

And what is the optimal trade-off between these social benefits and privacy concerns?

- There is no way to protect this system 100%. Looking at it from a cyber-security perspective, which is related to privacy, if we’re going to build a system that has all of this functionality in it, will also have increasing attack vectors. There is just no way to populate this landscape with all these sensors and not dramatically increase the attack vector space that you have to be able to hack into the system. So we have to understand that this is a trade-off. You can’t have this kind of system without also increasing the amount of vulnerability that you have from penetrations from forces that you want to keep out of the system. The question is where is the optimal sweet spot for risk? In other words, how secure do you make it? The more secure you make it the more difficult you make it for other market entrants to participate in this Smart Grid paradigm, which means that you’re closing off revenue streams and pre-determining the shape of Smart Grid. You can make it as secure as you want, but then you change what it is. Thus policy makers need to understand that this is a true public policy balancing act between how secure you want it to be and how innovative, agile and conducive you want it to be for market development.

One of the recommendations made in the White Paper is that consumers should own the data. How realistic is that given that the utilities own the grid and by default control the data?

- You can arbitrarily determine from a policy perspective who should own the data based on whatever normative criteria you consider important to the decision. If you consider privacy as the paramount criteria in you evaluation of who should own the data, then you can figure out what the implications are of putting ownership in certain kinds of entities. If you put it in the hands of the utilities, then there is clearly less security from the consumer’s perspective for that data. If you allow third parties, who want to traffic in that data, to own the data, then clearly that is even less security from the consumer’s perspective. So you can determine this at an arbitrary policy level.

- A lot of states, such as California and Colorado, have looked or are in the process of looking at this issue, and the general consensus is that the given the kind of privacy concerns that this data poses, that the safest place to put this is in the hands of the consumer. That’s not to say that the data cannot be transmitted, because of course it has to be transmitted to the utility in a Smart Grid, and could then be transmitted to a third party vendor. But ownership doesn’t end the question, because the data is going to be transmitted to these other entities. To be considered are the processes for making that data is used in a way that is protective of the consumer, but none the less conducive to certain types of business models that could participate in the Smart Grid environment. You want to have systems where consumers can opt into programs and allow people to use their information so long the consumer is fine with that. You have to have safeguards in place that allow the information to be used by other entities but the locus of control in our opinion is that it should reside with the consumers. That is the most pragmatic and safest place to put the ownership of the data.

The Smart Grid City Project here in Boulder has received a lot of attention, both optimistic and critical, by those working in and around the Smart Grid space. What is the state of the project and how would you describe the Smart Grid City experience?

- There has been a lot of criticism of the Smart Grid Boulder experiment and there were certainly mistakes made by the utility that was involved. But I think people also forget that it was an experiment and it was a first of its kind experiment in the United States. To their credit, Xcell stepped out on a limb and tried to do something that they thought was innovative. So the fact that there were failings and it’s not a perfect template for other utilities to mimic is something that we should certainly draw from the Smart Grid City Boulder experiment.  But we should also not loose sight of the fact that we have learned very good lessons on how to do Smart Grid properly and it is also testament to the fact that a utility has taken an innovative step in an area where traditionally they don’t do anything.

- One of the things that is interesting about the Smart Grid City experiment was that there was a great deal of frustration from the residents of boulder that there wasn’t enough functionality for them. For those with informational kiosks in their home, they weren’t getting real time updates, but 24 hour updates instead. Which is not what optimal for demand-side management from a consumer’s perspective. Continuous pricing wasn’t realised, but it was also not part of the realisation plan from Xecel’s perspective. To put it bluntly, I think Xcell hit a home run when it came to marketing the Smart Grid City experiment, but only a single when it came to delivering on the actual project. The fact that there was a discrepancy between the marketing and the actual implementation made a lot of people unhappy.

Do you have any closing remarks?

- The entire idea of Smart Grid is nascent, people are still figuring out what it means and what it should mean. Yet people are already thinking the idea of Smart Grid has “jumped the shark” as a colleague of mine put it [see:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark]. Basically that a term or idea has reached its apex and is on a decent that cannot be stopped. I think there is some credibility to viewing Smart Grid in the way. There was an extraordinary amount of excitement around the idea of Smart Grid, but Smart Grid is, as I said, a fairly simple idea and it isn’t so much the be all and end all of where we want the electricity market and prevailing electricity paradigm to go in the United States on the world. We can see lots of different innovations that aren’t necessarily part of Smart Grid, such as micro grids. What we’re seeing is that Smart Grid is emblematic of a big change of our understanding and interaction with electricity, but it’s only one of series of changes that we should hopefully be seeing over the next 10-15 years. It may not even prove to be the most profound of those changes.

This interview was conducted in person Tuesday 16^th November 2010, in relation to Talkstandards’ Smart Grid Week, Boulder,  CO.

Stacy Baird stressed the key role played by those who implement eGov strategies, i.e. government employees. He argued that training is critical for the success of new e-services. Workers may otherwise not have the right skills to undertake the needs and not find their place in the new organizational.

Ajit Jaokar pointed out that “Open Government”, a new buzz phrase, does not necessarily demand the implementation of open standards and open source software. Rather, Open Government is Government as a Platform or Government 2.0 which in itself is a philosophy. What is important is not the code but the philosophy of openness. The technology on which eGov services is built could vary.

Steve Mutoski drew some lessons from a recent review of eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks (eGIFS). He argued that many policy makers have an ineffective and misplaced focus. Technological interoperability, which is the main focus, is to a large extent an issue already taken care of by the marketplace. eGIFs deserves further attention.

Tore Hoel took a special look at Learning, Education and Training (LET), which is an emerging domain where the use of standard catalogues is a primary form of governance. He argued that the idea of standards catalogues is flawed. In emerging domains it is difficult to determine the optimal candidate for recommendation, therefore eGovernment standards boards should focus on semantic, organizational, cultural, political and legal interoperability. Then, the LET domain might innovate by the implementation of ‘unstable’ standards.

Oliver Bell went on to point out an important ‘glitch’ in the innovation process of data exchange. The 1990’s switch towards electronic handling of data brought measures to digitally handle information but not to archive it. This has resulted in a decade without appropriate government records. As we now stand before the next step into Government 2.0, we must not make the same mistake. The further digitization of services, communication and interaction needs to be matched by the development of archiving standards. The key is to include archiving standards as a core part of system design, not to try and solve the problem after the fact.

Mattias Ganslandt highlighted some experiences and lessons from Sweden, the number one country on the UN eGovernment readiness ranking. The government’s willingness to use ICT as a means to distribute individualized information and collect information from citizens has resulted in a number of very successful eGov services, e.g. eIdentification and online filing of tax returns. The Swedish experience shows that a pragmatic, value-oriented and neutral approach to eGovernment and procurement of ICT and software works well when applied in an open economy with a good basic ICT infrastructure. It also shows that adoption and development works well if applied on a limited scale.

A common theme for the discussion is the challenges presenting eGov policy makers in the process of creating a decentralized, open and interactive government. Although innovation has taken development of the public sector quite a bit already, much work remains to be done before the vision of trans-nationally interoperable eGov systems is realized.

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The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) 1.0 was first introduced in 2002, along with the eEurope Action Plan 2005, in purpose to provide recommendations concerning technologies and further information which could facilitate pan-European eGovernment services.

The EIF is directed towards the Member States’ public authorities, setting guidelines as to how ICT services should be designed and implemented and how the procurement process should be handled to ensure future trans-national interoperability and cross-border mobility.

The EIF was originally founded on eight fundamental principles; Accessibility and Multilingualism-services should be available and accessible by all, Security and Privacy- online solutions should have a maximum level of security and transparency, protecting user information, Subsidiarity- each Member State and EU institution is responsible for achieving interoperability, Use of Open Standards- use of open standards is recommended, Assess the Benefits of Open Source Software (OSS)- OSS should be considered when constructing an ICT solution, Use of Multilateral Solutions- on single solution implemented in several areas result in multilateral interoperability.

In 2008, an official draft version of the EIF 2.0 was made available for public comments. The Commission expresses the need for updating the EIF 1.0 definition of interoperability, which simply meant that ICT and business processes enabled the sharing of data, information and technology, since different aspects of the meaning of Interoperability has been found. Therefore, a broader definition has been introduced describing interoperability as the ability of diverse organizations and systems to work together and thus increase efficiency.

EIF 2.0 recommends that public policy should Support Standardization and Innovation and Ensure Administrative Neutrality. The idea is that public administrations should ensure that the standard selections process is fair to all vendors and make sure that the fee to be paid is not prohibitively expensive. Although the EIF 2.0 still states that open standards should be preferred and open specifications implemented where possible, the direct referencing has been replaced.

More lately, an unofficial draft of the EIF 2.0 has leaked (the exact source and status of this document is disputed), in which the wording on openness differs from EIF 1.0. First, openness is merely seen as the willingness to share knowledge. Second, no direct referencing to open standards or OSS is expressed. Third, the document refers to an “openness continuum” between open and closed. Fourth, the draft refers to interoperability can be achieved if all actors are using identical technology.

The Commission has declined to confirm that the leaked draft reflects the opinions or views of the EU.