Transcript Addressing the Limitations of Open Standards

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/mw-2007/talk-standards/
Addressing The Limitations
Of Open Standards
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath, UK
Co-Authors
Marieke Guy, UKOLN
Alastair Dunning, AHDS
Email
[email protected]
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Contents
This talk will cover the following topics:
• Introduction
• Standards are great 
• Standards don't always work 
• Layered approach developed by QA Focus
• Application to JISC development programmes
• Application elsewhere
• Sustainability
• Conclusions
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Introduction
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About Me, About UKOLN
Brian Kelly:
• UK Web Focus – national Web advisory post
• Advises higher & further education & cultural
heritage sectors on Web innovations, standards &
best practices
• Involved in Web since January 1993
• Involved in Web standards for JISC development
programmes since 1995
UKOLN
• National centre of expertise in digital information
management
• Location at the University of Bath, UK
• Funded by MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives
Council) and JISC (Joint Information Systems
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Committee)
Open Standards
Open Standards Are Great …
JISC's development programmes (like others):
• Traditionally based on use of open standards to:
 Support interoperability
 Maximise accessibility
 Avoid vendor lock-in
 Provide architectural integrity
 Help ensure long-term preservation
History in UK HE development work:
• eLib Standards document (v1 – 1996, v2 – 1998)
• DNER (JISC IE) Standards document (2001)
which influenced:
• NOF-digi Technical Standards (digitisation of
cultural resources)
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Open Standards
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… But Don't Always Work
There's a need for flexibility:
• Learning the lesson from OSI networking protocols
Today:
• Is the Web (for example) becoming over-complex
 "Web service considered harmful"
 The lowercase semantic web / Microformats
• Lighter-weight alternatives being developed
• Responses from the commercial world
Other key issues
• What is an open standard?
• What are the resource implications of using them?
• Sometimes proprietary solutions work (and users
like
them).
Is itinformation
politically
incorrect to mention
this!?
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Open Standards
What Is An Open Standard?
Which of the following are open standards?
• PDF
 Flash
• Java
 MS Word
UKOLN's "What Are Open Standards?" briefing paper
refers to characteristics of open standards:
• Neutral organisation which 'owns' standard &
responsible for roadmap
• Open involvement in standards-making process
• Access to standard freely available
•…
Note these characteristics do not apply equally to all
standards bodies e.g. costs of BSI standards; W3C
membership
…
A
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digital information management
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Compliance
Compliance Issues
What does must mean?
• You must comply with HTML standards
 What if I don't?
 What if nobody does?
 What if I use PDF?
JISC 5/99 programme
~80% of project home
pages were not HTML
compliant
• You must clear rights
on all resources you digitise
• You must provide properly audited
accounts
 What if I don't?
There is a need to clarify the meaning of must
and for an understandable, realistic and reasonable
regime
Acompliance
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Contextual Issues
The Context
There will be a context to use of standards:
• The intended use:
 Mainstream
 Innovative / research
 Key middleware component  Small-scale deliverable
• Organisational culture:
 National vs small museum
 Service vs development
 Teaching vs Research
 …
• Available Funding & Resources:
 Significant funding & training to use new standards
 Minimal funding - current skills should be used
• …
An open standards culture is being developed, which is
supportive of use of open standards, but which recognises
the complexities
and
caninformation
avoidmanagement
mistakes made in the
past
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The Layered Standards Model
Owner Quality Assurance
External factors: institutional, cultural, legal, …
JISC
3rd
Parties
Context: Policies
Prog. n Funding
Research Sector …
Annotated Standards Catalogue
Purpose Governance Maturity Risks …
JISC /
project
Context: Compliance
External Self assessment Penalties Learning
JISC's layered standards model, developed by UKOLN.
Note
that
one
sizeinformation
doesn't
always fit all
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Contextual Model
Implementation
How might this approach be used in practice?
Development Programme
Committees
Advisers
Programme
Team
Programme XX Call / Contract
Proposals must comply with XYZ standard
Proposals should seek to comply with XYZ
Proposals should describe approach to XYZ
Projects audited to ensure compliance with …
Projects should develop self-assessment QA
procedures and submit findings to JISC
Projects should submit proposed approach
for approval/information
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Report
JISC
Manager
Contract
Report must
be in MS
Word / … and
use JISC
template
…
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The Standards Catalogue
The information provided aims to be simple and
succinct (but document will still be large when printed!)
Standard: Dublin Core
Example
About the Standard: Dublin Core is a metadata standard made up …
Version: New terms are regularly added to …
Maturity: Dublin Core has its origins in workshops held …
Risk Assessment: Dublin Core plays a key role …. It is an important
standard within the context of JISC development programmes.
Further Information:
• DCMI, <http://dublincore.org/>
Note that as the standards
•…
Author: Pete Johnston, UKOLN
catalogue is intended for
Contributor:
wide use the contents will
Date Created: 04 Oct 2005
need to be fairly general
Update History: Initial version.
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Note recent feedback has identified the need for heading on
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usage Aincentre
other
programmes (i.e. political acceptance)
Feedback
Standards Catalogue Process
There's a need for developing and enhancing the
standards catalogue in order to:
• Update with new standards
• Learn from feedback and experiences
Context
Policies
Compliance
Review
E-Framework
Standards
Standards
…
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Support
Infrastructure
QA
Framework
User
Experiences
Funder's
Experiences
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Sustainability
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Sustainability
How do we
• Sustain, maintain & grow the standards catalogue?
• Develop a sustainable support infrastructure?
Suggestions:
• More resources for support infrastructure
• Extend model to related areas to gain buy-in, etc
• Exploit learning gained by projects, reuse
experiences, encourage sharing, etc.:
• Build on QA Focus approach (briefing docs and
case studies)
• Contractual requirement for projects to produce
end-user deliverables and deliverables related to
development process
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Sustainability
Lessons From NOF-digi TAS
What have we learnt from supporting the NOF-digi
programme:
Use of Standards
• Best practices not necessarily embedded if
imposed externally
• Formal compliance monitoring can be expensive
(& unproductive)
Establishing Community of Practice
• Limitations of top-down & centralised support
• Sustainability problems of large, monolithic and
centrally owned support resources
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Support
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Support Infrastructure
Opportunity to exploit deliverables from JISC-funded QA
Focus project:
• 100+ briefing documents & 30+ case studies
• Licensed (where possible) under Creative Commons
• UKOLN are continuing to publish new documents
(documents on Folksonomies, AJAX, Podcasting,
Wikis, etc. published recently)
Case Study Template Case studies:
• About the Project
• Opportunity to describe
• Area covered
experiences in specific areas
• Approach taken
• Standard template to ensure
• Lessons Learnt /
consistency & provide focus
Things We'd Do
• Allows UKOLN to promote
Differently
projects' work 
management
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• Project
get better Google
rating 
Support
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Support Infrastructure (2)
How do we integrate the standards catalogue with
implementation experiences, etc.
• Linking to related information in Wikipedia (the
world can help the updating)
• Uploading information to Wikipedia – the wider
community can help to update and maintain it
• Making information available with CC licences –
so others can use it, update it – and hopefully give
feedback on enhancements
• Use of syndication technologies (RSS & OPML)
Note this is a Web 2.0 approach:
• Uses Web 2.0 syndication technologies
• Trusts users and benefits from a wide user base
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• Contributes to Web 2.0 services
Support Model
Different stakeholders have
different interests
Developers
• Selection of standards
& architectures
Users
• Is it usable?
• Will it do what I want?
• Will I use it?
• Can I use it in various
contexts?
Funders, etc
• Addressing differing
interests
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Support
Similar Approaches Elsewhere
AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council)
programmes:
• Requirement for bids to include technical appendix
• Covers open standards, metadata,
documentation, rights, preservation, …
• Bids marked by technical experts
• Flawed technical proposals are informed of
deficiencies
• Training and Advice provided to community to help
raise awareness of best practices and improve
quality of development proposals
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Web 2.0
Parallels With Web 2.0
This approach has many parallels with Web 2.0
Web 2.0 Culture
• Openness: Encourage of sharing by developers
(problems as well as successes); use of CC; …
• Always beta: There is not a single correct solution,
but a process of continual development
• User-focussed: Importance of satisfying user
communities, rather than a set of rules
Web 2.0 technologies
• Alerts & Syndication: Speedy alerts for fellow
developers and reuse of content for developers
• Blogs & Wikis: Tools for developers to facilitate
sharing and collaborative working
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Example: Syndicating Content
QA
Focus
resources
areRSS
embedded
in University
of Waterloo
Note
importance
of: (a)
and OPML
(b) modular
approach
Web
site.
Resources
are also
beingtoported
to a use
Wiki&toreuse of
and (c)
Creative
Commons
licence
maximise
support
ongoing
maintenance by Web Standards community.
100+ briefing
documents
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Conclusions
Conclusions
To conclude:
• Open standards are important for large-scale
development work
• It is therefore important to have a pragmatic
approach and not hide behind dogma
• The contextual approach:
 Allows scope to address complexities of technologies;
deployment environments; etc.
 Best deployed within a supportive open standards culture
 Can be extended to other relevant areas
• We can use Creative Commons licences for
standards information; support materials; etc.
• We can (and should) take a Web 2.0 approach to
support
not just end userwww.ukoln.ac.uk
services)
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