Gotze.eu

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  • Sharing a bit of identity

    That was easy. First, I claimed it, then checked it, then mapped it and then checked it again, and now I guess I can claim my identity is gotze.eu. My public persona is currently at gotze.myopenid.com. I’m playing with my own IdP, but that’s not ready yet.

    OpenID is cool. To show you just how cool it is, try this: Using your own OpenID, try making a comment to this entry. You should be able to identify yourself with OpenID on this blog. Thanks to this great plugin.

    I wonder if anyone can recommend Perl libraries for OpenID? I notice there’s also a MT-plugin which I guess use Perl-libraries. Got to try that out. But in general, if anyone could explain what kind of work will be needed to OpenID-enable a web application, please holler!

  • An e-democrazy fellow

    My old friend Steven Clift made a short stop here in Copenhagen this week, and we had a good talk about the status of e-democracy. I had arranged for Steve to make an interview on DR (national radio) – the interview was on the air twice this weekend, and is now online at  Harddisken: Net-demokrati der rykker.

    Steve was recently inducted as an Ashoka Fellow. This will enable him to intensify his important work with local online Issues Forums through an expanded E-Democracy.Org.

  • Standards, Security, and Sectors

    OASIS Adoption Forum

    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”.

  • Version2: New Media for IT Professionals

    Version2

    On Monday, Danish media house Ingeniøren A/S will launch the first phase of Version2, a new biweekly magazine and online media for IT professionals in Denmark. I’m proud to say that I’m part of the team behind Version2.
    The magazine and website will launch in November, but we will start the river of news via Ingeniørens site next week, where Tania and I are covering the JAOO-conference.

    The “real” Version2 opening in November will be our attempt at practising “Media 2.0″/”News 2.0” or whatever – lots of good blogs, wikis, and all that.

  • Strategizing the use of open source in the public sector

    A forthcoming book, Open Source for Knowledge And Learning Management, edited by Miltiadis Lytras and Ambjorn Naeve has a substantial chapter – “Methodological Considerations in Strategizing the Use of Open Source in the Public Sector” – that I co-wrote with Christian Wernberg-Tougaard, Kristoffer Herning, and Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz, all of Unisys.

    In our chapter, we present and discuss an evaluation model build to describe the different layers of impact on a government organisation when deciding whether to use open source or traditional software.

    The book should be available in December, just in time for the Christmas shopping! It can already now be pre-ordered from Amazon.

    Bonus link: Christian has a blog. Subscribed.

  • Report: Use ODF, Save 550 Million

    The Danish debates about open standards continues. Over at Ingeniøren, we are covering the development extensively and continuously, but only in Danish. On Monday, we brought a story with roughly the same title as this entry’s title.

    The story is about the so-called Rambøll-report, which is a report about the costs related to switching to open standards for document formats in the Danish government. The report is made by Rambøll Management, a Danish consultancy, on behalf of The Danish Open Source Business Association (OSL).

    The report establishes three scenarios for the development:

    Scenario 1: Microsoft Office and ECMA Office Open XML. Would cost 380 million kroner over 5 years with migration to MS Office 2007; 105 million kroner if using current versions with plug-in.

    Scenario 2: OpenOffice.org and ODF. Would cost 255 million kroner over 5 years, covering all migrations costs plus already existing MS licence costs until outphased.

    Scenario 3: Microsoft Office (with plug-in) and ODF. Would have only marginally higher costs than in scenario 1.

    The Open Source Business Association Rambøll Management estimates that the whole of government (including local government) could save 550 million kroner by migrating to OpenOffice.org and ODF. That’s around 94 million US Dollars. Quite a lot of money for a small country like Denmark.

    Three politicians from Parliament, Morten Helveg, Morten Messerschmidt and Anne Grete Holmsgaard, participated in the press conference about the report on Monday. These three were the driving forces behind B103, the Parliamentary decision about open standards. All three expressed satisfaction with and support to the report’s recommendations. Messerschmidt even offered to personally bring it over to the Minister of Finance, who on Tuesday will present the Annual Budget.

    There are no official comments from Government. Last week, a governmental committee published a report about interoperability. That report recommended a number of initiatives, but was also criticised for being indecisive on many issues, for example those related to document formats. The Parliament Order states that government must use open standards, and sets January 1, 2008 as a deadline for the implementation. “It’s hardly time to be indecisive now”, as Morten Helveg commented.

    In an unsurprising move, Microsoft Denmark totally dismissed the Rambøll-report. They were also the first to comment on the governmental report, which they found good and constructive.

    Update: By request of Rambøll Management, we brought an update. Their report only speaks about the state, and they will not draw conclusions for the complete public sector. The $ 94 million figure is suggested by the Open Source Business Association, based on data from IDC.

  • Standards – A Critical Frontier for Research

    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.

  • Digital Identity Management – Challenges and Benefits

    Amir Hadziahmetovic has published his MSc in IT thesis, which he made under my supervision. It is in English and is called Digital Identity Management – Challenges and Benefits (Download PDF). Besides giving a nice introduction to and analysis of Identity Management, Amir makes some interesting observations about the identity management situation in Denmark. I recommend everyone to read this good thesis.

    I’ve extracted a few central paragraphs introducing the project:

    The main research problem is how to find the optimal model that will solve Digital Identity (DI) management and the data interchange for electronic business in new network economy. The problem lies in unknown path of how to make choices for interoperable DI, and how to find the optimal strategy to implement chosen model. The research will commence with exploring the area of general Digital Identity Management, continue with analyzing platform for interoperable management and exchange of DIs, including implementation challenges, and end with listing the benefits of having such a platform implemented.

    Imagine the sewerage management of a bigger city where each building block has a container for waste waters instead of a city-wide sewerage system. Without drain-pipes connecting the containers, every now and then a container would fill up, and for emptying a pump-trucks would be needed. They would pump out the content from a container, and spill it out at some depot outside the town. This would be very complex system of containers and trucks, difficult to control and manage. Some of the containers would certainly get overfilled, causing flooding and bad smell. With the growth of the city, the system would get even more unreliable. Therefore the majority of today’s cities have outspread sewerage system, which connects the depots, automating the spill of waste waters.

    The similar problem modern business has with today’s DI management: Identity data in containers, filling up quickly; the system unable to exchange data with other systems; difficult to maintain and automate the spill of data. To enable development of electronic business, more reliable system for DI management is required.

    Business trends today push organizations toward strengthening of cooperation and linking of business processes between them. Many companies and governments are tending to expand their activities by integrating online services and systems, and letting external users access internal data. Individual users want comfortable Web experience, and minimal effort in getting tailor-made products and services. Inability of today’s IT systems to match these trends is choking present development of business. Strengthening of cooperation and linking of business processes is putting pressure on IT systems and belonging infrastructure, requiring that Digital Identity data is created in unified fashion, and safely exchanged between organizations.

    Digital Identity Management (IM) is a fundamental part of integrated company systems and online services. It defines who has access to what in some cases, and identifies customers and users of the services in other cases. IM architecture of today has to evolve from predominantly silo to common, interoperable architecture, based on open standards. This kind of architecture is a fundament for Federated IM, where identities are safely exchanged.

    This project will try to look at Digital Identity Management, technology and architecture in relation to business goals and strategies. The main concepts of Digital Identity Management will be addressed i.a. concepts like Federated Identity, Single Sign-On (SSO), and Open Standards. The report will present a study of business and technical implications of Federating Identity, where Identity management is the central issue.

    An analysis of the practical as well as architectural aspects of Federated Identity will be covered. An analysis of open standards for interoperability will be covered, especially those advised by Danish National IT and Telecom Agency and their Reference Model for Identity. The report will focus on standards from the Model such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Public certificates for electronic services – OCES Digital Signature, but also will discuss alternatives. Finally privacy issues will be considered.

    The fundamental objective of any enterprise IT system must be full support to business flexibility and agility in ever-changing business environment. The ultimate goal of this project is to perceive the challenges of the IM evolution path, and to show how Identity Management supports connection between the systems and the processes, providing users with better web experience.

    Method: The project will list general theoretical issues, comparing different views on these issues, and presenting own reasoning.

    The obstacles in relation to acceptance of Reference Model for Identity will be analyzed. The analysis will be based on empirical research including feedback from involved organizations, interviews with individuals from selected organizations, conferences, and forums.

    Again: Download Amir’s thesis (PDF).

  • Belgium Jumps On The ODF Wagon

    I have been inspired by BELGIF for a while, but here is somethig that puts Belgium on The ODF Map:
    Dominique Deckmyn of ZDNet reports (same here) some very interesting news from Belgium:

    “In a blow to Microsoft, Belgium’s government departments will be instructed to use an open file format for internal communications.”

    There is a press announcement from the Belgian Council of Ministers about “Use of open standards for the exchange of office documents”. The announcement is available in only French and Dutch, none of which are languages I am very proficient in, but as far as I can tell, the decision proposed by Mr. Peter Vanvelthoven, Minister for Employment and Computerization, was made Friday by the Council of Ministers, and essentially says:

    “All federal government agencies must from September 2007 ensure that they can receive and read ODF documents. This does not exclude the use of other formats. It is up to each agency to determine the way in which the functionality of reading is guaranteed.

    Depending on the results of an impact analysis carried out by Fedict, ODF will from September 2008 be the standard format used for the exchange of office documents.”

    Someone who speaks French or Dutch, please verify my translation.

  • Planet Gøtze

    Next phase in the transformation of Gotzespace has begun. Since my blog now resides at gotze.eu, the gotzespace.dk domain (web) is now used for my new Planet Gøtze. Its named that because it is using a planet aggregator, and because it tracks the inner and outer Gøtzespace (my blogs, my tags, etc.).

    Usually planets track technologies (such as Open Office, Debian, and GNOME) or blogsubspheres, but in my case, the planet just tracks my space, and that’s its only purpose. I don’t think my server could handle my complete reading list anyway.

    I just wanted a simple planet, and ended up using Lilina. I removed a number of its features, such as the google lookup, which slows down the page too much.

    On a general note, I notice that many bloggers have started to include their del.icio.us or whatever tags in their blog feeds. That’s in my opinion a bad idea. If I want to subscribe to people’s personomies, I can do so at del.icio.us or whereever they tag. Blog feeds are for blog entries!