An Approach To Standards: A Presentation For CIE Partners

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An Approach To StandardsA Presentation For CIE
Partners
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/c
ie-2005-08/

• About This Talk
• This talk describes
• The difficulties in using open standards
• The layered approach developed for JISC
• The applicability of this approach for the CIE

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
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Background
Background

• JISC development work
• Traditionally based on use of open standards to
• Support interoperability
• Maximise accessibility
• Avoid vendor lock-in
• Provide architectural integrity
• Help ensure long-term preservation
• History
• eLib Standards document (v1 1996, v2 1998)
• DNER Standards document (2001)
• which influenced
• NOF-digi Technical Standards
• ..

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Lessons Learnt
Background

• Experiences of the QA Focus (and NOF-digi
  Technical Advisory Service) revealed problems
• Lack of knowledge of standards
• Immaturity of standards
• Failure for standards to take off
• Difficulties when building on existing work
• Uncertainty of what to do if standards not
  implemented correctly
• Lack of resources
• Lack of understanding (why, how, best practices,
  )

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Need For Flexibility
Background

• A need for flexibility (lessons from OSI
  networking)
• Is Web (for example) is becoming over-complex?
• Lighter-weight alternatives being developed
• Responses from the commercial world

• Compliance Issues
• What does must mean?
• .. must comply with HTML standards
• What if I don't? What if nobody does?
• .. must clear rights on digitised resources
• .. must provide properly audited accounts

There's a need to clarify meaning of must and for
an understandable reasonable compliance regime
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The Context

• There will be a context to use of standards
• The intended use
• Mainstream ? Innovative / research
• Key middleware component ? Small-scale
  deliverable
• Available Funding Resources
• Significant funding training to make use of
  important new standards
• Minimal funding - current skills should be used
• Organisational culture
• HE vs FE
• National museum vs small, volunteer organisation
• Cross-organisational cultural issues
• Multimedia (BBC) ? E-learning (BECTa/JISC)

Contextual Approach
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Layered Approach to Standards

• xxx

Policies (Catalogue?)
OSS
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Scope Of The Standards Work

• What should the scope of Standards Catalogue be
• CIE development programmes
• All work
• Content areas will include
• Web ? File formats
• Metadata ? Resource discovery
• E-learning ? Addressing
• Alerting ? Authentication
• E-Research ?
• What else?

Contextual Approach
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Implementation

• How might this approach be used in practice?

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Collating The Content

• We are using a Wiki to collect information about
  the standards
• Being used by a small groups of trusted
  individuals
• Avoids bottleneck for uploading and maintaining
  content
• Note the Wiki is used for creation maintenance
  of the data and is not intended as the final
  repository

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Scope / Differences

• Scope of the standards catalogue
• Initially technical standards which support
  interoperability across CIE partners (i.e. not
  in-house Schemas)
• Initially avoid best practices and guidelines in
  use of standards?
• Handling Differences
• Template provides mechanism for flagging
  subjective comments (e.g. maturity of standards)
• Work does not aim at reconciling differences
• Do we flag conflicts with the catalogue "There
  are conflicts over Foo vs Bar" "JISC say 'Foo'
  but BECTa say "Bar"?
• Do we park the conflicts for others to resolve
  (and this exercise helps identify the areas)?

Contextual Approach
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End Of Part 1

• Any questions?

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Part 2Deployment And Support Infrastructure
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Publishing The Content

• The Standards Catalogue
• Needs to be available as a document which can be
  easily read
• Data should be reusable and interoperable
• JISC Framework environment
• For CIE
• Plans
• Version 1 available as document
• Data ported to CETIS's Framework software
• We are currently talking to CETIS about this
• Is it possible?
• What are the resources implications?

Contextual Approach
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Building On The Work

• The JISC work can form the basis of similar work
  for the CIE (Common Information Environment)
• Working with MLA, BBC, BECTA,
• Pooling existing resources
• Identifying areas of agreement and diversity

Standards For The CIE
Note that the CIE work will not aim to reconcile
differences, but to identify those areas
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Standards Catalogue Process

• There's a need for developing and enhancing the
  standards catalogue in order to
• Update with new standards
• Learn from feedback and experiences

Standards For The CIE
Review
Standards
The Standards Catalogue can be integrated with
the JISC's 'Framework'
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Access Issues

• A single central repository or a distributed
  approach?

Standards For The CIE
Catalogue
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The Bigger Picture

• The vision is for
• Modularity in approaches to standards,
  accessibility, software, digitisation, ..

Standards
Context
Policies
Compliance
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Lessons About Support

• Lessons from JISC/NOF-digi programmes
• Importance of being able to repurpose support
  resources
• Need to avoid embedding generic advice with
  programme-specific details
• IPR issues for support materials

Standards For The CIE
Support
Context
Advice
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Support Infrastructure

• Need for a support infrastructure which covers
• Advice to Funders Putting together Calls,
  Evaluation Criteria, Contracts, etc
• Advice to Projects Why the standards are needed
  Pros and cons of deployment strategies Ways of
  ensuring standards are being implemented
  correctly
• We'll build on UKOLN/AHDS QA Focus work
• 80 briefing documents and 30 case studies
  published
• Licensed under Creative Commons

Standards For The CIE
Can CIE partners contribute to this? Will sharing
technical support materials be less contentious
than cultural heritage resources?
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Conclusions

• To conclude
• Approach to developing standards catalogue based
  on QA Focus's experiences and JISC-commissioned
  review
• Acknowledges importance of context
• Allows for hard-line implementation (which is
  needed in some areas)
• Can be developed within a CIE context
• Need to consider wider support infrastructure
• This will be an ongoing process