Addressing%20The%20Limitations%20Of%20Open%20Standards

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Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conference
s/mw-2007/talk-standards/
Co-Authors Marieke Guy, UKOLN Alastair Dunning,
AHDS

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, UK

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
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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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About Me, About UKOLN
Introduction

• 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
  Committee)

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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)

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

Open Standards

• 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 it politically incorrect to
  mention this!?

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What Is An Open Standard?

• Which of the following are open standards?
• PDF ? Flash
• Java ? MS Word

Open Standards
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Compliance Issues
Compliance

• What does must mean?
• You must comply with HTML standards
• What if I don't?
• What if nobody does?
• What if I use PDF?
• You must clear rights on all resources you
  digitise
• You must provide properly audited accounts
• What if I don't?

JISC 5/99 programme 80 of project home pages
were not HTML compliant
There is a need to clarify the meaning of must
and for an understandable, realistic and
reasonable compliance regime
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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 ? Teaching vs Research
• Service vs development ?
• Available Funding Resources
• Significant funding training to use new
  standards
• Minimal funding - current skills should be used

Contextual Issues
An open standards culture is being developed,
which is supportive of use of open standards, but
which recognises the complexities and can avoid
mistakes made in the past
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The Layered Standards Model
Owner
JISC
3rd Parties
Context Compliance
JISC / project
External
Self assessment
Learning
Penalties
JISC's layered standards model, developed by
UKOLN. Note that one size doesn't always fit all
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Implementation

• How might this approach be used in practice?

Contextual Model
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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
• 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, lthttp//dublincore.org/gt
• Author Pete Johnston, UKOLN
• Contributor
• Date Created 04 Oct 2005
• Update History Initial version.

Example
Note that as the standards catalogue is intended
for wide use the contents will need to be fairly
general
Note recent feedback has identified the need for
heading on usage in other programmes (i.e.
political acceptance)
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Standards Catalogue Process
Feedback

• There's a need for developing and enhancing the
  standards catalogue in order to
• Update with new standards
• Learn from feedback and experiences

Review
Standards
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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

Sustainability
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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

Sustainability
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Support Infrastructure
Support

• 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
• About the Project
• Area covered
• Approach taken
• Lessons Learnt / Things We'd Do Differently

• Case studies
• Opportunity to describe experiences in specific
  areas
• Standard template to ensure consistency provide
  focus
• Allows UKOLN to promote projects' work ?
• Project get better Google rating ?

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Support Infrastructure (2)
Support

• 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
• Contributes to Web 2.0 services

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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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Similar Approaches Elsewhere
Support

• 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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Parallels With Web 2.0
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

• Note importance of (a) RSS and OPML (b) modular
  approach and (c) Creative Commons licence to
  maximise use reuse of 100 briefing documents

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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 materials (and not just end user services)

Conclusions