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  • Interoperability for all

    In the report from a conference in UK, my collegue Peter noticed a passage where Jim Haslem reportedly said:

    “I actually read the eGIF the other day – nice reading on a quiet evening after a couple of beers. The problem is that I didn’t really know what I was looking at – it was not a lot of use to me, it seemed to be trying to be all things to all people.” The government needs to work to make the eGIF more usable, he said, and the standards body could help with that.”

    Jim is chair of the new UK Local e-Government Standards Body.

    The Local e-Government Standards Body will:

    • research and maintain an information repository of e-Government schemes
    • assess how these schemes impact on, and contribute to, local e-Government standards
    • compile a standards catalogue by mapping existing standards and identifying gaps to be filled
    • ensure that effective action is taken to ensure �standards gaps� are filled
    • identify and publicise local e-government projects and best practice
    • deliver practical support and high quality advice to Councils, their partners and suppliers on the interpretation and adoption of local e-government standards
    • establish processes for agreeing and accrediting local e-government standards and projects that complement the national standards framework.

    Local government in Denmark does not have anything like this body. It would be good if they had, I think.

    Speaking of eGIF, our Danish Reference Profile will be released really soon now. I’ll take Jim’s point about the usability of an eGIF, and have thought about a few things that could be done. I think we might be able to work together across our national boundaries, and perhaps together make our eGIFs more usable. We could:

    • Make joint reference implementations, best practice descriptions, guidelines, etc.
    • Offer transnational services for communities of practice and knowledge sharing in general
    • Together approach industry vendors and standards organsations in shared issues, e.g., document standards.
    • Work together on streamlining our national eGIFs. Collaboration also regarding emerging technologies.
    • Coordinate work done in international organisations, such as in the EU, as well as in our various networks, on my part especially in ICA and GOL-IN.

    To me, it is important to set the right expectations to an eGIF. That is not just because I as the project manager for the Danish eGIF is “measured” on how well my deliverables meet the expectations, but also because an eGIF is not “all things to all people”, and should not be seen as such. First, it doesn’t even try to say “all things” – only a few important things, such as “use this and that standard” or “it’s time to move on from that standard”. Second, an eGIF does not have “all people” as a target group. It is true that the eGIF – a framework – is “universal” in the sense that it covers in principle all government IT solutions, big and small. But “all peole” should not be taken literaly – an eGIF is aimed at specialists, like those who write requirement specifications and those who build systems. But I know, and I think that Jim knows that too, that the eGIF is and will always be too general to be more than a checklist which could and shoudl guide the decision making process, for example by having the vendor spefify any deviations from the eGIF. An example could be an accessibility declaration: By specifying whether a solution is following WAI guidelines and produces valid (X)HTML etc., much is said.
    Then it becomes much easier to do the “stay-or-sway”-dance companies like Gartner Group talk about, and perhaps even to do so at a strategic level.

  • Citizen Advantage, a trademark

    International Government Navigator points to Deloitte Research’s Citizen AdvantageTM: Enhancing Economic Competitiveness Through e-Government. A quote:

    “In the private sector, success is measured by how business creates a competitive advantage to fuel profits and increase shareholder value — but the public sector demands a more holistic view. To be successful, governments must transform themselves into streamlined, efficient organizations; but they must also deliver extraordinary advantages to the citizens and businesses they serve through new levels of efficiency, accessibility and responsiveness.”

  • Gunfight at the WS Corral

    Politics, greed, complexity and marketing. Could be the ingredients in a new Hollywood movie, but is actually how a bunch of experts described the current web service development. InfoWorld: Web services still challenged by standards is about the standardisation work around web services, and the two “camps”, Sun-Oracle and IBM-Microsoft.

  • Interoperability frameworks

    Phil is blogging about Interoperability frameworks. The Danish Interoperability Framework, which we call the Reference Profile, is being made as we blog. We’re going to implement Utah style status indications.

    Phil raises some important issues about governance and adoption etc. I’d be interested in how frameworks work in other countries. The Danish approach is going to be the usual pragmatic way, no legislation, no big programmes, no funding, but lots of facilitation and pro-active deliberations. It’s going to be some busy months, when we launch the Reference Profile …

    I’m now also officially looking for good reference implementations and best practices. For example, could someone please send me a list of web service implementations that are critical?

  • Framework for Web Services Implementation

    InfoWorld: OASIS to build Web services framework:

    The OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) Technical Committee plans to design a template for Web services deployment to enable systems integrators, software vendors, and in-house developers to build e-commerce solutions more quickly, according to OASIS. The committee will define functionality for building Web services applications and service-oriented architectures.

  • Journals for e-gov people

    Steve pointed to a few e-government journals in his latest DO-WIRE: eGovernment Quarterly and Journal of E-Government. I googled around a bit and found a few other journals: Electronic Journal of eGovernment, International Journal of E-Government, and e-Service Journal. I’m in no particular haste to publish stuff myself, but now I have a few references to throw at PhD-students and others who need/want to publish.

    I must admit I don’t read any of these journals. Should I?

  • Europe’s Future

    Commission Press Room: The European Commission has sent out a communication on the role of eGovernment for Europe’s future. The communication is available in the main languages.

    Key actions proposed:

  • access to public services for all via multiple platforms (PC, TV, mobile terminals);
  • new services via broadband development;
  • trust and confidence building measures;
  • swift adoption and transposition of directive on re-use of public sector documents;
  • three-year action plan on electronic public procurement by 2004;
  • development of pan-European services;
  • interoperability framework to be adopted by end of 2003;
  • new approaches to benchmarking needed;
  • one-stop shop for eGovernment related activities of the EU.

  • Gates on e-government

    Bill Gates: Government in the Digital Decade:
    So realizing e-government; it’s a process. It’s a process that will roll out over the years ahead. I’d expect that virtually all of you over the next year will have very exciting projects in this area. We want to be a partner to help you on those things, we want to show you how the cost for doing those things can actually be kept surprisingly low by using the latest in software and hardware technology. And we want to make sure that as these systems roll out the security audits, the review to make sure that these systems are fully accessible to everyone in your country, that all of those things are done in the right way so that e-government really is a benefit to everyone.

    Microsoft’s Digital Decade Vision is being rolled out with the forthcoming Office 2003. If the rumours Phil Windley and others hear, that Microsoft is considering using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for their file formats, perhaps Mr Gates should come clean and start talking about his Digital Millennium Vision …

    As the recent Cyberinsecurity report suggests, there are serious issues with monocultures (Windley and Jon Udell have more on this). Sean Gallagher has a good metaphor: Windows is the potato of the Internet age.

    It’s a bit ironic that just this week the Chief Security Officer of Microsoft Denmark, wrote in the Danish Computerworld, that “investments in security can be exaggerated.”

  • Ownership

    Sean McGrath agrees with me on EA ownership, and makes some important additions:

    Most critically, what is needed is not simply XML. XML is just a fancy alphabet. It gains you very little in terms of ownership and control unless you apply it intelligently.
    You need standards – your standards – for semantic representation of business data – completely independent of any technology stack. You need to understand how data conforming to these standards will flow around your enterprise architecture. You need to tuck these into Appendix A of your RFT.
    That is the only way you will ever get true ownership over your own enterprise. Without it, your just constantly posting (expensive) bail to take the handcuffs off something you always thought to owned but you didn’t.

    I didn’t mention XML, did I? Well, Sean might know that in the Danish context, XML is high-priority in our e-government work. I shouldn’t be caught criticising our own work, but I must admit that I sometimes wonder why our politicians and top-executives need to learn all our acronyms.

    Sean argues that we need standards for semantic representation of business data. True, so true. But we need much more than that. First of all, we need to “sell” the whole enterprise architecture concept as a strategic process that involves several architectural disciplines that must interoperate and build a bridge between business and technology. By using standards for semantic representation of business data, and perhaps taking the next step and making business patterns, the business is “packaged” in a way that the technology guys – for example the XML-integrators – can work with. We also need bridge builders from the technology side, and also here, standards and patterns would be a good contibution. For example, technology stacks could be measured against enterprise standards and patterns, and/or against government-wide such. A forthcoming deliveable from our EA Programme is the Reference Profile, a list of technical standards that we recommend, and that we suggest agencies to “tuck these into Appendix A of your RFT”. By thereby, hopefully, leveraging the technology side to at least a shared common denominator, we hope not only to achieve “more interoperability” across government, but also allowing enterprises/ministries to focus more on their business development and help them govern the technology development.

  • Power and Architecture

    I’ve been adding a few New links in GotzeLinked. Among them, Gartner: Megavendors will ‘handcuff’ your enterprise architecture which has a good point: Increases in componentry and openness in packaged application architecture belie a megavendor agenda for greater architecture ownership and customer lock-in.

    Architecture ownership. Exactly. That’s what it is all about.

    So, how do you take ownership over the architecture? how do you avoid vendor lock-in? By having a good and active enterprise architecture. Gartner sells their “New Enterprise Architecture”, and other analysts and consultants and vendors sell EA en masse, so it is not that we lack a market for getting “help”. But the point is exactly that you must take ownership, and that it doesn’t really matter how rich you are, enterprise architecture cannot be bought (like happiness and love).

    Having said that, you do need money to play this game. To get a taste of how “buying EA” works, I’ve just bought META Group’s $4000 EA Bible (EA Desk Reference). That’s one expensive book!