The Danish Government Business Reference Model - FORM (in Danish) – is an overview of what the Danish public administration does, which services it provides, and which legislation that regulates these services.

I have been ‘playing around’ with the dataset FORM makes up. In the blog menu, you will find links to pages about Project NemFORM.

To demonstrate how the reference model can be used, I have created this simple application (autosuggesting services; reference), which can also be used on a mobile device (tested on Android only, so far).

If you are interested in the geeky details, read about my experience with FORM XML, and JQuery-empowered FORM usage. You can also read about my implementation of the new FORM widget from Digitaliser.dk.

My project is mentioned in a news story on Modernisering.dk, the Ministry of Finance’s website for digitization of government (and owners of FORM). ‘Innovative use’, they call my project. How nice of them

Full disclosure: The Ministry of Finance is a client of EA Fellows. NemFORM is however a private project of mine.

I wrote a Danish article in Version2 published yesterday. Here is my translation:

Danish Document Controversy Raises International Concerns

OpenDocument Foudation is very concerned about the development in Denmark. Moreover, the organisation is readying a plugin that will make it even easier to use the ODF-format.

John Gøtze

The awareness of the political initiatives around the usage of open standards reaches beyond Denmark.

“Denmark needs a winning attitude, but this policy is appeasement”, comments Sam Hiser, Director of Business Affairs in OpenDocument Foundation, an organization promoting and supporting ODF.

Sam Hiser is following the international development around ODF closely, and is not pleased with what he hears from Denmark.

“Denmark’s dual format policy is one of the more depressing events in recent months”, he says.

“It sets a precedent for compromise that paints Danish agencies into a corner,” he argues.

Hiser proposes that the Danish policy should above all permit CIOs to do the necessary business process re-engineering to get away from the control of tMicrosoft.

“We’ve always thought our conception of an ODF Plugin for MS Office as being among Microsoft’s worst nightmares. And that it is. Something which goes into Windows XP/Office and permits native file open, edits and save as ODF is going to be very interesting”, Hiser tells about the ODF Foundation’s plugin.

There are other ODF-plugins to Microsoft Office. First, Sun’s Plugin for MS Office, which produces an OpenOffice-equivalent conversion to ODF. Second, the Microsoft/Clever Age/Novell Plugin for Office 2007.

The OpenDocument Foundation calls their ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office “da Vinci”, but is not yet an finished product.

Hiser explains that the da Vinci plugin has two elements the others do not. First, it has a ODF InfoSet API for server-side integration with the ODF Plugin for MS Office. Second, it has a ODF Feature-Set Wizard to help organizations govern the features in their office files.

Hiser explains that the OpenDocument Foundation’s plugin will ensure vendor independence when developing applications that use the document data.

Thanks, Sam!

UPGRADE, the European Journal for the Informatics Professional, has just published an Open Document Format Monograph.
The monograph is published on behalf of CEPIS by Novática (ATI, Spain), in English and in Spanish. The English version is available online: download as PDF, see content and summaries. The Spanish version is out in print and soon online.

I warmly recommend the monograph’s articles. I’m of course pleased about my contribution (announced earlier), but recommend reading several of the others first.

These are the articles:

OpenDocument Standard for Digital Documents
Jesús Tramullas-Saz and Piedad Garrido-Picazo, Guest Editors

Open by Design: The OpenDocument Format Standard for Office Applications
Erwin Tenhumberg, Donald Harbison, and Rob Weir

Is OpenDocument an Open Standard? Yes!
David A. Wheeler

OpenDocument Hidden Traps and their Side Effects on Free/Open Source Software
Marco Fioretti

ISO-26300 (OpenDocument) vs. MS-Office Open XML
Alberto Barrionuevo-García

Interoperability: Will the Real Universal File Format please Stand Up?
Sam Hiser and Gary Edwards

ODF: The Emerging Document Format of Choice for Governments
Marino Marcich

Promotion of the Use of Open Document Formats by the IDA and IDABC Programmes
Miguel A. Amutio-Gómez

A Brief History of Open Standards in Denmark
John Gøtze

Standard Open Formats and Libre Software in the Extremadura Public Administration
Luis Millán-Vázquez de Miguel

I’d be interested in the international reactions to this piece of news:

On Friday, the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, made a press announcement (Danish) about his plan for following up on the Parliament Resolution 8 months ago.

The implementation plan is presented in a report which suggests that “open standards should be implemented gradually by making it mandatory for the public sector to use a number of open standards when this becomes technically feasible”.

The report identifies an initial sets of open standards as candidates for mandatory use from 1 January 2008 “if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve additional costs to the public sector”.

The implementation plan’s elements are as follows:

• “From 1 January 2008, all new public IT solutions should make use of the mandatory open standards relevant to the IT solution in question unless there are significant reasons for not complying with these standards.
• If there are significant reasons for not complying with the relevant mandatory open standards, this must be reported on signing the contract, stating the reasons for applying the exceptional provisions.
• In case of IT solutions where the technical procurement is above the EU tendering limit, the reasons must be reported to the National IT and Telecom Agency for the purpose of publication.
• All ministers must ensure that mandatory standards are drawn up within their respective areas of responsibility where this is relevant. This must be made in cooperation with local/regional administrations in line with the existing common public projects in the area of digitalization.”

In short: The Danish Interoperability Framework gets a new level of status: Mandatory.

The proposed mandatory standards from 1 January 2008 falls within the following areas:

• Standards for data interchange between public authorities
• Standards for electronic file and document handling
• Standards for exchanging documents between public authorities (Open Document Format and Office OpenXML)
• Standards for electronic procurement in the public sector
• Standards for digital signatures
• Standards for public websites / homepages
• Standards for IT security (only within the public sector)

Around a dozen standards: Compliant XHTML or HTML, complaint CSS, WAI Level 2, OCES (digital signature), XML 1.0, XML Schema 1.0, NDR 3.0, FESD (docuument management), OIOUBL, UNSPSC, and DS484 (ISO 17799).

With regard to standards for exchanging documents between public authorities, the report proposes that “it should be mandatory to use at least one of the document standards Open Document Format or Office OpenXML”, and that it is up to the individual agency to decide what they want. The report explains that a study will be conducted this year with “the purpose of obtaining the necessary experience with these standards before 1 January 2008″.

A revised governance model should ensure more mandatory standards over time. The minister is given more authority, but not much actual power to rule over the sectors. The report goes into the “comply or explain”-principle and how it will be practised, and here, it discusses exceptions … I’ll quote in length from their English summary:

“Requirements regarding the use of mandatory open standards will not involve any obligation or incentive to expedite procurement, upgrading or implementation of new or existing IT solutions by public authorities.

…

To ensure the value of open standards to the individual authority, it is important to avoid the authority being compelled to make inappropriate choices. For this reason, a number of exceptions are made to the general rule of using mandatory open standards.

In connection with contracts and development projects, authorities are exempted from the rules of using mandatory open standards if this means that the authority is compelled to adopt a solution which:

• is significantly more expensive in relation to using other standards,
• degrades the security level critically in relation to using other standards,
• involves a significant reduction in functional performance which is a direct result of the solution being based on mandatory open standards,
• increases the implementation time markedly,
• leads to conflicts with standards applicable within specific areas as a result of international commitments.

Furthermore, public authorities are exempted from the rules of using mandatory open standards if the solution does not involve data interchange with other systems.

In case one or more of the points above are in evidence, the relevant authority may choose to dispense with specific mandatory open standards for the solution concerned.

New solutions where technical procurement involves overall costs exceeding the EU tendering limit must be reported to the National IT and Telecom Agency on signing the contract, stating the reasons for applying the exceptional provisions.

New solutions with overall costs below this limit should also make use of mandatory open standards, unless they fall within the exceptional provisions. However, these solutions are not subject to the reporting requirement.

Download the English summary as PDF or ODF. The full report in Danish is here.

The consultation period ends 23 March.

During Bob Sutor’s visit in Copenhagen (I posted the homemade video with Bob Sutor the other day), I had organised for him to be interviewed by DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation, national public radio).

Tonight, DR brought the interview with Bob in their program Harddisken (third section), with an almost half-hour long theme about open standards hosted by Henrik Føhns. He had invited me in the studio for comments and debate with Marie Munk, Deputy Director General in the National IT and Telecom Agency. Bob apprears in edited and partly-translated form, but Marie and I were live on the air (and didn’t get to hear Bob!). So, it was there and then. Afterwards, of course – oh, why didn’t I say this and that, and all that, but it was also fun being live.
The whole show is now downloadable as a podcast — the Harddisken podcast-feed should reach 10.000 users, I was told, and is the third most used podcast of all in DR. Go get the podcast and help Harddisken become the most downloaded podcast! (of course, it’s in Danish, but the music is great – and Bob does get a bit of airtime, which of course is in English). About two-thirds into the MP3-file.

Since I cannot get DRs online radio and their fancy DRPlayer to work in my system (Mac OSX, Firefox) I chose not to link to those services here … but want to say to DR: Thank you for the podcasts!

I’m going – are you? The third annual OASIS Adoption Forum is held in London on 27-29 November. The forum is themed Enabling Efficiency between Government, Business and the Citizen: Managing Secure Interactions in Sector Applications, and the list of presenters is very impressive. Also note that a Workshop on the State and Future of PKI has just been announced being part of the event. There will be sessions about adoption of OASIS standards such as SAML, XACML, and WS-Security.

OASIS Adoption Forum “seeks to educate and expose security leaders and professionals to the tools, standards and implementations that are transforming security interactions and relationships between citizens, businesses, governmental institutions and agencies. With increasing threats encompassing everything from hacking to identity theft, providing a secure environment must be a major objective for companies, governments, and organizations worldwide. The success you enjoy tomorrow depends on the security decisions you make today”.

The esteemed scholary journal MIS Quarterly has issued a Special Issue on Standard Making.

The introductory article by the editors Kalle Lyytinen and John Leslie King, Standard Making: A Critical Research Frontier For Information Systems Research, is freely available, as are abstracts for all articles, but you need access to a research database to get online access to full-text articles.

It is great to see the emerging scholary interest in standards. Kudos to Lyytinen and King for the initiative to the special issue, which I understand has been underway for several years.

The seven articles in the special issue cover a range of issues. In Lyytinen and King’s words:

… the accepted papers embody a rich variety of approaches to account for standardization processes and outcomes. Studies focusing on standard creation draw mainly upon institutional analyses, power analyses or collective action theory and associated action dilemmas (e.g. prisoner’s dilemma). Standards choice draws from economic theories of network effects, path dependency and switching costs. Standards impact embodies theories of how firms at the industry level can mitigate against increased transparency and lower barriers to entry created by open standards, as well as sociological analyses that try to explain why expected benefits of standardization orders did not emerge. The papers overall exhibit a significant variation in levels and unit of analysis, from individual firms to industries to types of standards or standardization outcome, and research methodology, from modeling and simulation to ethnographic studies of standardization processes. This shows how IS standardization research is likely to benefit from multiple research methodologies that also promote cross-pollination of ideas.

I found the paper by Jeffrey Nickerson and Michael zur Muehlen, The Ecology of Standards Processes: Insights from Internet Standard Making, particularly interesting. Nickerson and zur Muehlen analyze the emergence of new web service choreography standards, and trace a decade of workflow standardization processes as “a set of legitimizing moves where actors, ideas, and institutions constantly and randomly collide to create a standard, which is technically acceptable and institutionally ‘forceful’ for future adoption”. The analysis shows that “institutional ecologies associated with Internet standards are not driven solely by economic calculus but that other norms and values, like elegance, design spirit, or technical wizardry, count in making ecologies viable”.

Standard-making in the IS field involves at least 400 standards bodies and consortia, and many thousands standard-makers. In itself a huge ecosystem with many “species”. As the recent years’ developments around XML-based document formats show, there is a lot of competition within the ecosystem, or between various ecosystems.