Predicting the future – what's up for European standardisation in this decade until 2020

I am currently reading an interesting essay from Elena Esposito on the fictionality of future realities (“La realtà della finzione nella società moderna” - available in German translation in the edition suhrkamp under the title “Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität”). Elena Esposito is professor at the University of Modena and Regio Emilia and one of the leading European sociologists in the tradition of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. This essay is fascinating as it puts the rise of the novel as the increasingly predominant form of fiction in the 18^th century into relation with the developments in mathematics in the area of stochastics and calculus of probabilites at the same time. And it shows the element of fictionality in the predictions of what is going to happen and how high the likelihood is.

To me this essay is a bit like a disclaimer for a piece of work that I did last year in the context of my participation in EXPRESS – the expert panel on the revision of the European Standardisation System that had the task to develop recommendations for European standardisation with the horizon of 2020. As input to the discussion I had developed a so-called PEST analysis looking at the four key aspects of political, economic, social and technological challenges for standardisation in the new decade. And I tried to clearly align my analysis with some – as precise as possible – policy recommendations in the area of standardisation. 

I received some encouraging feedback about this document. So I put it up on slide share. 

J friedrich pest_outlook_2020

View more documents from Jochen Friedrich.

Happy to receive further feedback, criticism, whatsoever.

Any reactions?

Am I totally off track or would you share some of the predictions?

What am I missing?

European Parliament takes clear stance on openness in the context of completing the internal market

Earlier this week the European Parliament finished its “Report on completing the internal market for e-commerce” (2010/2012(INI)). It is a very interesting document, very comprehensively addressing the full spectrum of electronic commerce in relation to the internal marekt – and definitely worth reading.

In this report, once again, the Parliament takes a very clear stance on openness as critical for the internal market in many ways. It acknowledges the "importance of open and neutral access to a high-speed internet connection, without which e-commerce would be impossible" (clause 43). And it asks the Commission "to work towards creating rules and standards" to overcome the "non-interoperability of software on commercial and social networking websites" (clause 47).

Very precisely the Parliament is clear on the need for open standards in the context of e-commerce. In clause 51 the Parliament expresses that it

“Believes that the development of, and support for, common, open technical and operational specifications and standards (for compatibility, interoperability, accessibility, security, logistics, delivery, etc.) will facilitate cross-border e-commerce by assisting consumers, especially vulnerable and inexperienced computer users, and by bridging the operational, technical, cultural and language barriers that exist between the various Member States;”

More specifically, the parliament clearly requires the use of an open standard in the area of document formats. As stated in clause 41 the parliament “Highlights the importance of an open document exchange format for electronic business interoperation and calls on the Commission to take concrete steps to support its emergence and spread”. For sure, the Open Document Format (ODF) standard which was developed by OASIS and approved by ISO (ISO/IEC 26300) is the standard available for use today. It has been implemented in multiple competing products and is demonstrating interoperability in real life on a daily basis.

Some statements in the document certainly require some more clarification and detailed specification. In general, however, I think this report is another milestone in the policy debate where Europe is taking leadership on openness and open standards acknowledging the benefits of openness for both societies and business. To some extend this complements the work the Commission successfully started years ago with the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) version 1.0 which recommends open standards for achieving pan-European, cross-border interoperability in eGovernment services.

Indeed, in all areas where software-to-software interoperability is concerned, open standards are critical for ensuring interoperability. They promote innovation in providing a trusted and open base for everyone to implement and use – and to innovate on top of. They are a basis for service oriented architectures and they prevent single-vendor lock-in, foster competition, allow choice and keep costs low – including most notably exit costs for technologies.

Report of the European Parliament's IMCO Committee on the “Future of European Standardisation”

In late June I was invited by the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) of the European to a hearing on European standardisation – see my blog entry on the event. This was part of the Committee's work on a report on the “Future of European Standardisation (2010/2051(INI))”.

The draft report as put together by Edvard Kožušník, the rapporteur, has been available on the committee's web site since mid August. This week discussion in the IMCO Committee on the report continues with the objective to reach a final version.

The report is very comprehensive and covers a full range of aspects around the current European standardisation system. It especially focusses on CEN, CENELEC, the National Bodies and their processes and structures. ETSI with its highly successful mixed model of direct membership and national representation comes a bit too short in the draft report and in the discussions.

The draft report very much focusses on preserving the current system. It is not visionary or forward looking. I appreciate that the current strengths of the European standardisation system need to be preserved – and I would add: in some cases even strengthened, e.g regarding improved transparency and the possibility for all interested stakeholders to follow standardisation activities and provide comments. Yet, I believe that there are challenges ahead of us that require a bit of new thinking and punctual reform. Globalisation and the increasing importance of global standards is one such challenge; the high potential for innovation by integration of technologies and the role of standards as facilitators ensuring interoperability is another; and the role of standards in policy making in general is an important third example.

Similarly, the urgent needs of the ICT sector for standardisation reform are not dealt with. While the report acknowledges the Commission's ICT White Paper the recommendations given, in this case in particular recommendation 28, are solely focussing on the current status quo. To be very clear: the transfer of specifications from fora/consortia to international standards organisations or ESOs is already possible today. But is very obvious that there are many instances where this does not work and is, therefore, not sufficient for effective policy making and public procurement as far as a global technology like ICT is concerned. Given the fact that the ICT sector has been identified as the sector where change in standardisation policy is most urgently needed, this is a strong deficiency of the draft report. This is probably the most important point that could be fixed by the Committee this week.

Some important aspects around this fora/consortia discussion:

• a large part of the most relevant and broadly implemented standards in ICT are developed by so called fora/consortia outside of the formal standardisation system;
  
• when talking about such fora/consortia in the ICT sector we talk about well-established global organisations operating with highly open and transparent processes and with a broad global membership including large and small companies, public authorities and academia (to be very clear: closed private clubs are out of the scope);
  
• since the standards from these fora/consortia are widely used and implemented globally (and relevant) there is no need and no added-value for transferring them into formally recognised organisations; after all, transferring includes additional overhead and administrative work and there are some issues like different IPR regimes that have sometimes been impossible to solve;
  
• so bottom line: many well-established and relevant ICT standards will not become formal standards but will be need for effective EU policy making, for innovation and for public procurement;
  
• all of this has been taken into account in the proposals made by the Commission in the ICT White Paper.

My wish-list, at first stage, for the IMCO committee and its report is pretty simple:

1. Welcome the ICT White Paper, express support for it and urge the Commission and the Member States to work on its implementation;
   
2. State the need for processes that enable direct referencing of ICT fora/consortia standards in EU policies and public procurement provided that these standards meet a set of well defined openness criteria like the attributes of eligibility laid down in the ICT paper;
   
3. Support the implementation of a multi-stakeholder platform on ICT standardisation as advisory group to the Commission.

Finally, it is worth noting that these fairly moderate changes to the European standardisation system as expressed in the ICT White Paper are globally seen as a very innovative and forward-looking step taken by Europe. Europe should work hard to keep this leadership role and strive for the fast legal implementation of a new, modernised ICT standardisation policy now.

Back from vacation ....

Coming back from vacation has been pretty tough this time because of the cold weather here North of the Alps. We had perfect and warm summer weather in the South-West of France at the Atlantic coast. But driving back home suddenly North of Orleans and Troyes the temperature fell down to less than 13 degrees. Urrgghh... We must have looked like coming from another planet in our shorts, short sleeves and flip flops.

But France was extremely nice. We really enjoyed it very much - the beaches, the food, the way of life. As an appetizer I post some pictures below.

No September has started which is usually a busy month as everyone is back from vacation getting ready for autumn and year-end work. There is a good deal of work ahead - I will keep you posted.

Great Atlantic beaches

Growing oysters

Dune du Pyla

Dune du Pyla

Beautiful lake-side beach

Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Sunset on the beach

To be or not to be - good to have been there

Saturday evening we saw Hamlet at the Heidelberg Castle Festival – luckily with perfect weather this evening. The Castle Festival is always a fantastic event with open air performances in the central castle courtyard. It was a very modern production of good old Shakespeare, with a good many modifications of the old text, but extremely impressive.

Director Simon Solberg has created a tour de force into all evil of the world. His Hamlet gets mad about the corruption and deceit he sees everywhere. The serpent of evil has undermined the entire world and continues to drive mankind into a life that is not worth living and that is disgraceful for human beings. Hamlet impressively shows this in the famous play within the play which he orchestrates. He starts with Adam and Eve and ends with the big banking crash of recent years. However, his madness drives Hamlet to finally becoming a tragic hero in the form of a terrorist accepting the death even of his friends. Like in the original of roughly 400 years ago the ending is disastrous. Death is everywhere – while there might be a glimpse of hope because the citizens of Denmark entered the castle ready to overthrow the corrupt regime.

The production is extremely powerful and the actors, above all Paul Grill as Hamlet, were marvellous and had to work really hard. I have never seen such a fast-moving production before, full with action and full with citations from other plays, from the rock and pop scene, from the global discourse of the last 40 years as such – including trivial TV shows as well as “the serious arts”. My favourite was the serpent talking like Kermit from the Muppets and Sesame Street. And don't worry if you don't remember any serpent at all from the last time you read Hamlet ;-)

There were some people who expressed their dislike with this production when the break started. Some even left and did not want to stay for the second part. The review articles that appeared in the local press are pretty neutral. The local Rhein-Neckar TV even gives you some glimpse of the performance. A nice picture gallery is available on the Heidelberg theatre's website.

All of us really enjoyed the performance very much. We found it very thought-provoking and all in all an impressive new interpretation of Hamlet in our time. This is definitely innovative theatre. This Hamlet might have some impact and influence far beyond the old walls of Heidelberg castle.

Openness at the core of eGovernance

A couple of weeks ago a Yale scholar, Dr Laura DeNardis, visited Europe and presented on e-Governance policies for interoperability and open standards. Dr DeNardis was, for instance, keynote speaker at a breakfast briefing hosted by OpenForum Europe. Unfortunately, I could not attend this event due to some schedule conflict, but only got the report – which made me regret even more that I couldn't attend.

But here's good news: Laura DeNardis' paper on the topic is available for download – I just came across this download link on the Social Sciences Research Network today.

I find this paper a very valuable piece of research. In a comparative approach Dr DeNardis has examined eGovernment policies around globe. She puts some spotlight on the government interoperability frameworks established in South Africa, Europe (the European Interoperability Framework – EIF), Brazil and Japan and, in the final section, derives some clear recommendations out of her research.

Dr DeNardis' analysis shows the changed role of governments with respect to ICT standards:

“Governments increasingly do not simply assume that 'all will be well' with standards. ICT standards have become an invisible but powerful form of technological rulemaking with consequences for national innovation policy, public safety, knowledge policy, and government efficiency and openness. Even in the 21st century, interoperability through standards is not a given but something that must be promoted. Lack of interoperability or problems with standards can create social or economic harm or contribute to a loss of faith in government. The use of proprietary specifications can impede government functions and services or make e-Government services and critical public information dependent upon a single company. These same proprietary specifications can limit the pace of information and communication technology innovation and be used as technical barriers to trade in global technology markets.” (p. 22)

In other words, Governments should consistently require open standards. As Dr DeNardis states, “When a standard is openly published and available to implement in new products, it can result in multiple, competing products and rapid technological innovation.” (pp. 2-3). The paper shows how leading global ICT standards organisations have adopted open standards policies governing the development, the access to and the availability of the respective organisation's standards. And the paper works out the relation between an eGovernment policy and the various functions governments have to fullfil, be it global trade, facilitating innovation, promoting competitiveness, ensuring fair and equal access to government information and to interaction with public authorities, etc.

Concluding, Dr DeNardis first provides, as she calls it, a “working definition of open standards” built around the key aspects of (i) open in development; (ii) open in implementation; (iii) open in use. And building on this working definition the paper derives a set of eight guiding principles for government interoperability frameworks.

Dr DeNardis' paper is definitely worth reading for everyone who is interested in standards and their use and implementation. It provides deep insights in the interests governments have and need to have in standardisation and open standards as critical elements in support of key government activities and tasks. And it gives a clear perspective on items to consider when defining eGovernance policies. I believe the paper can be of high relevance both for governments as they work on their policies or on refining them; for technology providers as they define their strategies and their portolios; for standardisers as they look at the future standards needed and at the terms and conditions for these standards; and, last but not least, for everyone of us – the citizens – as we have an interest in how public services are designed so that an open and democratic system is provided from which everyone can benefit in the interaction with their governments and authorities.

Relevant link of today: Video message from Vice-President Kroes to GUADEC 2010

Vice-President Neelie Kroes, EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, has given a video message on open source to the upcoming Gnome conference GUADEC 2010. The message is available on Youtube and embedded on the GUADEC website as well. I also embed it below.

In her speech Commissioner Kroes outlines the high acceptance of open source, its potential for innovation and its relevance for governments and public administrations. She mentions the leadership Europe has pursued on openness with the European Interoperability Framework, with other programmes like OSOR.EU, and now with the Digital Agenda and its focus on open standards and interoperability. Only 4 minutes long this is a remarkable address from the Commissioner bringing Europe back into the pacesetting position on driving growth, competitiveness and transformation in the digital age.

 But just watch yourselves: