Open Standards for Open Source for Open Government
Open Source solutions for government and the public sector
21 May 2012
What is W3C?
- The standards body for the World Wide Web
- International community of member organisations, full time staff and the public
- Lead by Web-inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee
What is a Standard?
What is a Standard?
What is a Standard?
What is a Standard?
It's what everyone agrees to do — however that agreement is reached.
- one person's good idea that gets taken up (e.g. RSS);
- an ad hoc group's good idea that gets taken up (e.g. robots.txt);
- government standards (eGIF, EIF etc.);
- the output of some sort of formalised working group.
Standards Development Organisations (SDOs)
Standards Development Organisations (SDOs)
- serve different communities;
- have slightly different processes;
- different funding models;
- different licensing models.
W3C
World Wide Web Consortium
Leading the Web to its full potential
What is an Open Standard?
One produced under an open process.
A spec on its own is not enough.
A spec without implementation is fiction.
Implementations Matter (a lot)
Implementations Matter (a lot)
What is an Open Standard?
transparency (process, technical discussions, meeting minutes, are publicly archived and referencable in decision making);
relevance (market needs, requirements, accessibility, multi-linguism);
openness (anybody can participate, and everybody does: industry, individual, public, government bodies, academia, on a worldwide scale);
impartiality and consensus (fairness and equal weight guaranteed by the process);
availability (access to the text, both during development, at final stage, and for translations);
maintenance (ongoing process for testing, errata, revision, permanent access, validation, etc.).
The Elephant in the Room
Licences
W3C is Royalty Free
W3C is Royalty Free
W3C is Royalty Free
Anyone can implement any W3C standard and not incur royalty fees.
That means it's the right licence for open source (how could a community pay a royalty fee?).
The Cabinet Office Consultation
Proposal is to set policy of using Open Standards for:
- software interoperability;
- data formats;
- document formats.
Proposal is to comply or explain.
The Web
Designed to share data and documents between departments running different systems at CERN (i.e. software interoperability, document and data formats).
Based on the idea that we can agree on a few simple things.
Built on royalty free open standards.
Implemented in a lot of open source software (Apache Web server, Saxon XML parser, Firefox browser).
Can equally be implemented in proprietary software (Microsoft, Apple etc.).
Why Open Standards are Right for Public Sector Procurement
Open Standards:
- prevent vendor lock-in;
- support open source software;
- level the playing field so that SMEs and enterprise can all compete on quality of service and innvoation on top of the standards.
Don't Feel left Out
- Your use cases matter;
- your experiences matter;
- your comments will be answered;
- you can participate directly.
The Web — it's been quite successful
Thank you
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