Gotze.eu

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  • We the Media

    Dan Gillmor‘s new book, We the Media is available online. The book is subtitled Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, and is about how new media and the explosion of conversations that blogs in particular represent, represents a deep shift in how we make and consume the news. Dan, a well-known blogger and professional writer/columnist, is a good storyteller. Buy it (UK/Europe) or buy in US. Or follow the explosion of blog conversations about the book.

    I fully agree with Dan about the profound changes we see. I think we have only seen the beginnings of what will be a long revolution. Which takes place at many levels.

    One of these is in politics, obviously. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen won the European elections in Denmark, and even though I doubt his blog significantly changed the vote, it was a good initiative. Respect. Even more so he deserves for continuing to blog after the elections. Let us see if he can make Bruxelles more “alive” by blogging his time in the parliament.

    There are far too few politicians who blogs. Tom Watson and Richard Allan, over in the UK, are some of the few who does a good job at it too.

    In the US, the politicians – who have significantly larger campaign budgets than we ever see in Europe – don’t seem to “need” to blog. They have people to do so. ConventionBloggers.com is the latest Dave Winer project. The Big Media (CNN) and grassroot-turned-“dotcom” (Technorati) “marriage”, CNN/Technorati Election Watch 2004, is another new project worth checking out.

    I have added a new category for Political blogs in GotzeLinked. Feel free to add blogs of a clearly political nature here. Especially elected officials blogs, but if that rules out US blogs, anything political goes. The list of links in this category will be available in OPML, so you can import the list directly into your feed reader.

  • Open Declaration

    The Open Group has announced the Developer Declaration of Independence. Sign the declaration! I have signed it as an individual.
    [Via Sean McGrath]

  • Looking for a student

    We have a job opening for at new student in our Architecture group. We are looking for a technically well-founded person, who knows about various technical standards, is a good researcher and news/tends spotter, can work fluently in both English and Danish, and who has some hands-on experience working on a LAMP-platform (Perl/php/python etc). Around 15 hours per week, maybe more. On flexible terms. Interested, or know anyone? Contact me now!

  • New newsbot

    Google News competition: The new beta MSNBC Newsbot. Search for news: enterprise architecture, e-government, and Bosnia. Now, Microsoft, what about providing these results as RSS feeds??

  • Back from Bosnia

    I am back from another mission in Bosnia. We were doing site-visits and other review work in the Brcko District. I can’t talk about our findings yet, but will seek clearence, since there are some interesting stories.

    The official website for the district is a whole story in itself, that I look forward to talk more about. The website was operational for a while (WaybackMachine), but has been under reconstruction for a long time. Due to reopen again pretty soon, we were told.

    Speaking of reopenings, I was of course in Bosnia at a special time: The opening of the restored Old Bridge in Mostar. Having tried regional transport during the week, I opted not to go to Mostar, and ended watching the opening event on television.

    When I travel, I always bring books. This time, I brought Francis Fukuyama‘s State Building (US). I am normally not a big fan of Fukuyama, but found this book very good and will without doubt recommend it to anyone interested in this important theme, state-building. One of the many good points Fukuyama makes is a strong distinction between state-building and nation-building, and about the scope of states, and their strength. He has a short article in The Observer about this.

    I took a number of pictures on my new OLYMPUS CAMEDIA C-310 Digital Camera. I have prepared a photo album on my TypePad site, but still need to transfer the pictures. And I also need to learn to remember to bring the camera whereever I go … I forgot it most of the time and didn’t get to take that many pictures.

  • ICA Enterprise Architecture Study Group Survey

    We have launched the ICA Enterprise Architecture Study Group Survey:

    The survey is intended to gather basic information about ICA countries’ work with government Enterprise Architecture. The study group wants to emphasise that all ICA member countries are invited to reply to the survey, whether their work is called Enterprise Architecture or not.

    The objective of collecting data through this survey is to get a comprehensive overview of activites in the EA field in ICA countries. Such overview does not exist today, at least not in the public domain, and it is found that the survey would be welcomed by the international community.

    Everyone working with enterprise architecture in government should consider responding to the survey.

  • Trackback spam alert

    I was hit by trackback spam today. That’s a first. But I am not the only one, see for example GlennLog.

    Guess it was just a matter of time before that would come. Trackback is, by design, “wide open” and prune for attacks. It’s sad, sad that it has to be like this.

    There are a few reports in the MT support forum, but maybe we should all call upon the Lazyweb to wake up. Please!

    Update: Several more reports. We are sitting ducks, Jay Allen says in his MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse.

  • Connecting the dots?

    Brian Kane’s thesis from ITU (this ITU) about Danish public IT strategy, Connecting The Dots – Why Danish IT architecture does not result in interoperability is a critical analysis of our work.
    Download (big PDF), Executive summary.

    Brian’s core findings include:

    • Both the general standards and recommendations and the specific case of the FESD project reflect an understanding of interoperability as being the exchange of business documents.
    • Guidance on how to expose systems as services following the concept of service oriented architecture is vague at best. Specifications are too broad and unspecific to be implemented in a consistent manner.
    • There is no coherent way of resolving the physical or semantic problems when two domains of control meet.
    • Most relevant standards are authorized for use, some overlapping and conflicting, but no guidelines are in place for when to use which standards and how.
    • Towards the goal of service oriented architecture, a sound underlying, perhaps publicly controlled, integration infrastructure is needed.
    • There is a need for a long-term roadmap covering IT architectural efforts in the decades to come. The roadmap should clearly describe the current IT architectural situation, and include an explicit statement of strategic goals and operationalized milestones.

    Conclusion:

    While important work is being done at data model level, the task of moving data from application to application is only vaguely described. In conclusion, Danish IT architectural work can currently best be described as initial, informal and ad-hoc.

    Thank you, Brian, for such an impressive contribution to the on-going dialogues and deliberations about architecture for e-government.

  • Standard standards

    ZDNet: When standards don’t apply is an interesting article by David Becker about standards and standardisation processes. Examples used are MS Office, PDF, Flash and RSS. Quotes Perens, Bray, etc.

    Our new definition of open standards, confirmed by the national IT Architecture Committee, is:

    A completely open standard has the following properties:
    – It is accessible and free of charge to all
    – It remains accessible and free of charge
    – It is accessible free of charge and documented in all its details

    This definition is inspired by Perens’ definition of open standards.

    How do you define open standards?

  • Interoperability Architecture

    Sean McGrath on E-Government Interoperability and Enterprise Architecture. Sean has worked with the European Public Administration Network‘s eGovernment Working Group on a report called Key Principles of an Interoperability Architecture.

    The working group has adopted the “threee interoperabilities” (organisational, semantic and technical) from the European Interoperability Framework, but adds two layers in defining an interoperability architecture:

    • Structured Customer Contact and Support
    • Organisational Interoperability
    • Semantic Interoperability
    • Technical Interoperability
    • Governance of Interoperability

    The report defines principles in each of these areas, and suggests a roadmap for how to implement the principles. Definately an interesting read.

    Today’s word in the EA Glossary is Interoperability.