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  • My EA Course

    I forgot to announce that I in Spring 2006, from February to April, again am running my masters course T8 Enterprise Architecture at the IT University of Copenhagen. The course is open to ITU-students as well as anyone else qualifying for Open University. There are usually many external students, and the class discussions are great.

    The class runs over 12 weeks. Besides lectures by me and guests, students are requested to make a project. Most of these projects are case-based, and (external) students often use their own organisations as cases.

  • Roadmap Launch in Denmark

    We have announced a Danish Conference on Open Standards to be held at Christianborg, the Danish Parliament, on 13 January 2006.

    We’ll have two international keynotes: Jeff Kaplan will present the roadmap, and Susy Struble from Sun will talk about current standardization issues in an international perspective, including ODF.

    There is good political interest in the conference, and all parties in Parliament will participate in a roadtable debate at the end of what promises to become a very interesting day.

  • Carpe apertio

    In Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems, we wrote: We welcome your ideas, best practices and case studies, which will keep this roadmap a vital, living tool. I have created a wikified version of the roadmap for OeG members and others to continue working on the roadmap to make it a vital, living tool. By extending it, elaborating on it, commenting on it, and whatnot. The wiki also contains updates info about translations and roadshows, and is already quite active.

    OeG Founder Jeff Kaplan has also started a blog. Subscribed. I like the tag line: Carpe apertio (Seize openness).

    I introduced the roadmap in Danish in PÃ¥ vej mod Ã¥bne it-økosystemer – eller: Openization!, in the November issue of Prosit, a newsletter to students, published by Prosa, the Danish Association of Computer Professionals.

    I have another article (in Danish), Kommunalreformens it-udfordringer (PDF-version) in Prosabladet, a monthly journal published by Prosa. That article is about the IT challenges in the municipal reform, and the need for architectural work.

  • Modernising Danish eGov setup

    Danish Computerworld just broke the news about changes in the governance and institutional setup for eGovernment in Denmark. There are as far as I can tell not yet any official announcements, but from what CW says, the Digital Taskforce is merging with two centres in the Ministry of Finance, 11th Office, which deals with modernization issues, and 14th Office, which deals with cutting red tape. The new office is called Office for Administrative Policy (or Public Management, perhaps?).

    Congratulations to Lars Frelle-Petersen, who will be appointed to co-lead this new centre. I’ve worked with Lars for several years, and think he’s the right person to lead the efforts.

    It is my hope that this new centre will take the lead in further developing the national enterprise architecture programme.

  • Open desktop

    I am running an experiment. This is how my desktop looks:

    Johns desktop

    As this illustrates, I am trying to run only open source (and free) products on Windows XP. I use OpenOffice for my office documents, Firefox (1.5 is out now!) as my browser, Thunderbird as my email client, and Sunbird as my calendar.

    I don’t miss Word, PowerPoint and Outlook the least. The MS Office install-CD sits in the CD-tray, but I have not once felt a need or urge to install it.

  • Sutor live

    Bob Sutor gave an excellent public lecture tonight here in Copenhagen. Even though it was announced just two days ago, around 80 showed up!

    Bob gave a preview of his Finnish keynote, and then gave an update on the ODF situation in Massachusetts and elsewhere (Armonk, for example). If you follow Bob’s blog and all the other blog/news coverage, you’ll know that industry support for ODF is increasing, and some new initiatives can be expected which will further consolidate ODF as a mature, open standard for office documents.
    Problems of a more technical nature will be solved (through OASIS), and although I didn’t hear Bob say so directly, I somehow got the impression that this “coalition” or “Open Format Freedom Fighters Forum” (Peter Quinn) silently (or loudly?) has said, “Hmm, OK, fuck them, we’ll take them on their own turf now”. Or, “Is this a competitive move? Absolutely,” as Stephen O’Grady is reported to comment last week.

    Whatever the outcome of the Massachusetts case will be, there is no doubt that ODF is “for real” and that we can now start talking about competition in the office document format area.

    So, basically, it is a “standards war” between two sides – ODF and Microsoft – but it’s too early to declare victory. ODF is central to IBM Workplace (where XForms has also become central, btw). And of course, ODF is central to Sun StarOffice as well as the open source office package OpenOffice 2.0 and several others, and Corel WordPerfect. David Berlind says “Microsoft will have little choice but to support it or turn its own MSXML-based file formats over to some sort of standards body or multi-party stewarded consortium”.

    Microsoft now has to come up with something really clever to win this war. On the other hand, they have been around in this business for a long time (several years ahead in actual use of XML in office), and might have more up their sleves than support for PDF, which seems somewhat odd considering their Metro efforts, which I assume they still work on. So, embracing PDF is probably “just” a response to “user requirements”, not a strategic move as such.

    Whatever moves we’ll see over the coming months and years, it is interesting to look at the larger picture:
    – XML won the office war by near-total annihilation of non-XML formats. Implementations of XML differ, but it’s all XML. That’s worth declaring as victory, for all. Peace.
    – (did Zip also win the war? for ODF yes, but not sure where MS stands)
    – the politics of standards is evolving, at least in the US. It’s almost hitting main street politics, and has hit the mass media. I guess that’s basically a good thing, although it also has costs and consequences in general.

    So, where is Denmark in all this? Well, in order to “warm up” my students before Bob came and we opened the doors to others, I had invited Danish MP, Morten Helveg Petersen, from the Social Liberals, to come and give his view on things. Morten has been driving the “IT-opposition” in parliament for several years. In 2003, he presented an open standards charter, and has been pushing for more ever since.

    Morten told about his B64 Bill to Parliament, which would mandate the use of open standards in government, but which were “dropped” due to elections being called, but is being re-presented. He also told about a recent political agreement which means that a National Knowledge Centre for Software will be funded and established.

  • Danish Rails Brain Drain

    Local news again. Well, sort of.

    Danish David Heinemeier Hansson of Ruby on Rails/Basecamp/Backpack/37signals fame is emigrating to the US. Friends are throwing a farewell party at Martin‘s place on Monday, November 14 at 20.00. It’s free. Show up!

  • Spelling out EA

    Jon Udell is Spelling out SOA via Acronym Finder. Interesting exercise 🙂

    On SOA, I also like Save Our Asses.

    EA is also:
    Earth Alliance
    Enforceable Agreement
    Endangerment Assessment
    Engagement Area
    Extended Arrangement
    Endless Ages
    Examining for Aphasia

    Hmmm.

  • Bob Sutor in Copenhagen

    Dr Bob Sutor, IBMs Vice President of Standards and Open Source, is en route to
    Open Mind 2005     in Finland to give a keynote on “Open Standards, Open Source and Communities – Backbones for Business and Innovation”, and will make a quick stop in Copenhagen.

    I’ve arranged for Bob to give a public lecture on Wednesday, November 9 at 19.00. Location is the IT-University, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 København S, Room 2A12. You’re all invited to join us, for what I’m certain will be some good and interesting discussions about open standards.

    Bob recently participated in Harvard’s Berkman Center’s discussion session on Open Standards and Interoperability. That discussion was meant to be an extension of the work of the Open ePolicy Group and our Roadmap in September. The discussions are worth listening to or reading. Also check Bob’s notes from the discussion.

  • Judgement Day

    The Digital Taskforce today published the final version (actually marked “pre-public draft”) of the OECD Peer Review of e-Government in Denmark. That’s definately been worth waiting for, and is an absolute must-reader for everyone in e-government and enterprise architecture. The OECD-team has done an outstanding job. Good job, Edwin, Christian, Gustaf, and all!

    The near 200 pages long review is full of good stuff, that should make everyone in Danish e-government not only proud, but also make us think about what we’re doing.

    In line with the decentralised nature of Danish government, and the strong autonomy of local government, the Joint Board does not have any formal powers to decide how, where or when government organisations (other than those of its members) will implement e-government. While this is consistent with Danish traditions of public management, many people interviewed for this review felt that more mandatory e-government requirements would help achieve even stronger results – especially in relation to adoption of the Danish “enterprise architecture” and related technical standards. Government-wide adoption of the enterprise architecture and standards for such things as ICT system and data interoperability is now widely acknowledged by OECD countries as being leading-edge e-government practice, supporting objectives such as increased efficiency, collaborative services delivery, and increased competitiveness of ICT industries. To achieve a full measure of these benefits, adoption of architectures and standards must be as widespread as possible. The question of how to respond to this situation is central to the ongoing progress of e-government in Denmark. (p. 9)

    The review examined the impact of various national strategies/initiatives:

    To which the reviewers comment:

    While these results are very positive, the fact that only 30% of respondents identified the Danish enterprise architecture as a significant driver, and only 12% cited the public sector modernisation programme, indicates that some aspects of e-government may benefit from more attention and leadership from the Joint Board.

    Under Proposals for action, we find:

    2. The Government could respond to widespread calls, from both within and outside government, to make certain aspects of e-government mandatory by assessing: 1) where, when and how moving away from the current approach of voluntarism might improve the results being achieved through e-government; and 2) what risks might arise from such a shift, both for individual organisations and government as a whole. Any such assessment could focus, in particular, on issues and options for change in the area of implementation of the Danish enterprise architecture and related technical standards.

    16. Collaboration between government organisations is a key to achieving Denmark’s e-government goals. Much effort has been put into providing co-ordination, and common ICT infrastructures and frameworks in support of better collaboration. While resources are still committed to their ongoing development, it is now important that these frameworks be widely translated by individual organisations into e-government systems, services and processes. The Government should examine the adequacy and/or efficacy of incentives that exist for government organisations to adopt or align with these e-government frameworks, and alter them as required. In particular, in relation to the Danish enterprise architecture and associated technical standards, the Government should examine issues around translating these from concepts into actual implementations, and consider what actions can be taken to address them.

    The OECD survey examined the technological challenges, and found that sharing standards and infrastructure among agencies was the single most important issue identified:

    The reviewers say:

    This result emphasises the importance of the work Denmark is doing in developing an enterprise architecture and other arrangements for achieving interoperability of information systems and data. It may also reflect the significant managerial and cultural challenges that accompany technological issues in this area of e-government.

    On EA, the review identifies two major concerns:

    • A major concern that, while the enterprise architecture and supporting standards and frameworks have been very well developed at the conceptual level, they are proving more difficult to translate into the actual standards and schemas required for implementation. Many people working to implement the architecture find it abstract and difficult to understand.
    • A second major concern that, while municipalities are solidly committed to the concept of enterprise architecture and common standards, their heavy reliance on one ICT vendor that provides them with many proprietary (i.e. non-standard) systems significantly slows the pace of their adoption of standards, and therefore the rate at which collaborative e-government goals can be achieved.

    All in all, the review mentions ‘enterprise architecture’ 53 times throughout the report. That should hopefully stimulate advances in the debates about EA, and as I said, make some of us think about where we’re going. Clearly, EA is important to advances in e-government. I’ve said that for years now, but it’s great to see OECD making the outcry so strongly as they do.