“Openness” – Ideology or Rationality?

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There seems to be a lot of talk of “open this”, “open that” and “open the other” these days: open source, open standards, open data, open access, open educational resources, open process… I sometimes get a sense of “open” being the new moral high ground but do not accept that an ideological basis for publicly-funded activity is adequate. This is not to say that I object to an ideological basis for personal action. This posting is a sandwich of under-cooked polemic on this topic inside some wholemeal bread.

While at the 2010 JISC Innovation Forum, I heard arguments that I would definitely place in the “rationality” category, particularly in a a session entitled “The Impact of Open”. This gave me heart as it indicated both that JISC is taking seriously the need to explain why “open” appears so frequently in its initiatives and because reactions to it indicated that the centre of gravity of conversation on “openness” is moving towards evidence and mechanism.

Why do I Object to Ideology?

To reiterate, my objection is to: “an ideological basis for publicly-funded activity”.

I also personally agree with propositions such as: “if public money is spent to effect ‘X’ then members of the public should have access to ‘X’, limited only if  ‘X’ as a rivalrous good (e.g. health-care).” i.e. I believe this is an appropriate starting point, a default position in the absence of a case to the contrary.

The problem with ideologies is that they are prejudice presented as common sense. Consequently they are imposed through power-struggle and lead to alienation. War and a pendulum of changing political fashion are the wasteful consequence.

Clearly, we do need to operate as a society on the basis of shared values but the problems arise when ideologies include values at a level of detail beyond the very broad or build-in attachments to particular means. It is my view that we cannot go into much detail at all if attempting to describe common values. For example, “the purpose of government activity as a regulator and executive for public spending is to increase health, wealth and happiness of the people it represents”. This general idea seems to have been present since the enlightenment, for example in the writing of the hugely-influential John Locke, and found expression as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the US Declaration of Independence and developed into Utilitarianism. I particularly like Stafford Beer‘s use of the term “Eudemony”, an echo back to ancient Greek ethics and an indicator that “happiness” is not understood in a hedonistic sense. I would also like to extend the meaning of “liberty” US Declaration of Independence to emancipation in a more general sense – freedom from the consequences of ignorance, from drudgery, and other forms of limitation – and move into the realm of Jürgen Habermas, who sees social theory as a fundamentally emancipatory endeavour. (I really should read “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”)

Prejudice, faith, belief, ideology, … (etc) are problematical because they do not provide us with the means to optimise benefit (eudemony, health-wealth-and-happiness); they do not address the mechanisms that we can trigger to effect change. They lack a theoretical basis. Such a basis also gives us an opportunity to understand the bounds;  an understanding of the  point at which we should draw-back from the application of a policy or principle is necessary in the interests of efficacy?

It should be clear that, if mechanism and theory are taken into account, asking about “openness” and public policy is not a single question but a prompt to ask questions in a range of contexts. It also requires us to make decisions about how we measure health-wealth-and-happiness. Radically-new models can be advanced and predictions made of whole-system benefits but it is probably better to consider the evolutionary paths; the world is a complex place with limited scope for imposition of master-plans and a historical record of disaster. Temper dreams with strategic thinking.

The Shadow of Legacy

The past naturally casts a shadow over the way we understand the world and the systems in place (NB: a general interpretation of “systems” is meant here). Sometimes we continue to operate in certain ways when there are better approaches. In a sense, the organisations and systems we have will always be partially obsolete as they arise out of a response to dynamic pressures. With an understanding of mechanism and theory, we are in a position to question the fitness for purpose of these organisations, institutions, systems etc… The risk of “pathological autopoiesis” (Stafford Beer in “Brain of the Firm”), literally killing yourself by trying to maintain yourself unchanged, is real for those who do not seek answers to such questions.

For example, the model of scholarly publishing we have arose from pressures in the past that made it viable and valuable then but at risk of pathological autopoiesis and an impediment today. Journals are only an instrument of scholarship (let us assume that scholarship has merit). See the reference in my closing section.

In another vein, the prevalent political ideology of the 1980’s led to many public sector organisations seeking ways of raising income from the assets created with public money. As digital resources became available, they were locked behind paywalls. It was only in the closing year or so of the previous UK government that we saw any serious change as, for example, the British  Geological Society launched OpenGeoScience and the Ordnance Survey launched their OpenData. Thankfully the new coalition government seems to be supportive of open public sector data and I am optimistic that the members of the Public Sector Transparency Board will be influential in leading the government to rational rather than ideological policy.

There are  many other cases where I believe restricting access, introducing pay-walls, etc in attempts at achieving sustainability leads to overall inefficiencies and sub-optimal health-wealth-and-happiness. I lack the convincing evidence and theory so I will keep them to myself.

Where are the Torch-bearers?

I’d like to conclude by returning to the “The Impact of Open” session at the JISC Innovation Forum. The person who most impressed me was Rufus Pollock, an economist who has applied himself to the mechanisms of openness. Two recent papers consider different questions:

These are the most important papers I have come across in recent times, not least because so many politicians are economists. This is the way to make a difference. The first makes some interesting reading about the limitations imposed on filtering/reviewing efficiency by orthodox journal models. The second argues that public sector information needs a thoughtful regulatory framework and concludes that marginal cost pricing (effectively zero for digital information) for information supply will generally provide the largest social benefit.

Rufus principally considers utility and equilibrium in his models, although not neglecting dynamical considerations in the papers. This would be a particularly interesting area to model, although challenging as it would probably require an approach such as agent based modeling. I would particularly like to see something like SKIN, “Simulating Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks” used to probe some of the “what if” questions for various openness scenarios. If only I was a man of independent means and not a wage-slave…

Future of Interoperability Standards – Technical Approaches

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In anticipation of a workshop/discussion meeting we are holding on September 24th, I have produced a short position paper, “Suggested Principles for Structuring Standards” (PDF 580kB), to outline the approach I speculate we should take in future in creating specifications and standards for learning education and training.

Responses, alternative views etc are most welcome before, during or after the meeting. I hope other attendees contribute papers and expect to synthesise conclusions of the meeting shortly afterwards.

A Quality Standard for Creation and Delivery of Fair, Valid and Reliable e-Tests

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A proposal has been made to the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36) for a New Work Item on a “Quality Standard for Creation and Delivery of Fair, Valid and Reliable e-Tests.”

To quote from the proposal:

Specific areas that could be covered within the standard include:

  • Roles and responsibilities – The key roles and skills required within the assessment process and life-cycle. e.g.,
    • senior management (responsibility for developing and supporting an e-testing strategy for the organisation);
    • psychometricians – those specialists responsible for creating the items and tests;
    • computer scientists – Computerization of the test delivery
    • coordination/operational management (implementation of the e-testing strategy and policies, and accountability for the e-testing process);
    • administration (responsibility for operational systems and processes);
    • technical support (responsibility for the technology), whether provided in-house or via a third party; and
    • working with the learner (maximising the potential for success through the etesting process).
  • Organisational requirements – Requirements to overcome the challenges and to realize the benefits of e-testing.
  • Coordinating the e-testing process – Administration, technical support, working with learners, invigilation/proctoring
  • The e-testing environment – general environment, security, workstation design and layout, hardware, software, peripherals and communications links (Can be drawn mainly from other standards including ISO23988)
  • Preparing for e-testing – registration, learner preparation, practice e-tests
  • Managing exceptions – planned/unplanned breaks, special needs/allowances, emergencies and irregularities
  • Data – transmitting learner data, data security, learner feedback and ‘certification’

This work-item has been co-proposed by the British Standards Institute committee “IST/43″, which is the means to representation of UK interest in ISO SC36 (broadly speaking, ICT in learning, education and training).

Anyone interested should contact either the chairperson or secretary of IST/43. Expressions of interest from potential new members are always welcome. Some information on past and present activity of IST/43 may be found on the BSI site.

Key Challenges in the Design of Learning Technology Standards – Observations and Proposals

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Here is a paper I’ve just written, “Key Challenges in the Design of Learning Technology Standards – Observations and Proposals” (PDF 260kB),  as part of an exploration of the many-sided question: “how should we make learning technology standards?”

Quoting the abstract:
This paper considers some key challenges that learning technology standards must take account of: the inherent connected-ness of the information and complexity as a cause of emergent behavior. Some of the limitations of historical approaches to information systems and standards development are briefly considered alongside generic strategies to tackle complexity and system adaptivity. A consideration of the facets of interoperability – organizational, syntactic and semantic – leads to an outline of a strategy for dealing with environmental complexity in the learning technology standards domain.

I should add that this is not meant to be the last word on the subject but a contribution to an ongoing conversation. Please comment.

This paper appears in the “International Journal of IT Standards and Standardisation”  edited by Jan Pawlowski, Tore Hoel and Paul Hollins. Copyright 2010, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher.

Open Source, Open Standards and ReUse: Government Action Plan?

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Yes, actually there is a document called “Open Source, Open Standards and ReUse: Government Action Plan“. This is the latest (Jan 27th 2010) statement from central government on the topic; previously an Open Source policy was hatched in 2004.

Really the document should be called “Open Source in ICT Procurement: Government Action Plan” as Open Standards get relatively little mention. Indeed, it would have been a more clear communication  if it had stuck to this scope. Having said this, there is evidence of a clear and purposeful approach. Here are a few snippets that I thought worthy of mention…

“The Government will expect those putting forward IT solutions to develop where necessary a suitable mix of open source and proprietary products to ensure that the best possible overall solution can be considered. Vendors will be required to provide evidence of this during a procurement exercise. Where no evidence exists in a bid that full consideration has been given to open source products, the bid will be considered non compliant and is likely to be removed from the tender process.”

“The agreement to the Cross Government Enterprise Architecture framework and its acceptance by the Government’s major IT suppliers has enabled the disaggregation of ‘closed’ business solutions into component requirements. This which allows sharing and reusing of common components between different lines of business.”

“We have clarified that we expect all software licences to be purchased on the basis of reuse across the public sector, regardless of the service environment it is operating within. This means that when we launch the Government Cloud, there will be no additional cost to the public sector of transferring licences into the Cloud.”

These, and much else in the document, show a clear focus on saving public money in the medium to long term. Great! The actions seem realistic from the point of view of implementation by public administrators. It will take some time but they seem to be pointing in the right direction and committed to fair comparison of OSS vs proprietary software.

There are also a number of references to “Open Source techniques and culture”. These deserve a “D: good effort” to my mind and are rher more challenging for government, civil servants etc. From my experience, Open Source culture and public administration culture (especially in central government) are not particularly close. That’s just the way it is and I’m glad that culture change isn’t the priority in this document. To be fair, they are trying and making some progress but I’m not expecting open email reflectors – e.g. Apache Foundation – to be anything but highly unusual and little things give it away such as the absence of any licence or IP assertion on the document, let alone a Creative Commons or GNU Copyleft licence.

In spite of the above qualifications: ‘good effort HMG CIO Council, keep at it!’ And in the medium term, there are some clear opportunities for open-minded suppliers who understand how to work with OSS in their portfolio.

There is also the Government ICT Strategy, which is the umbrella for the document I am referring to above. This includes lovely names such as the “G-Cloud” (government cloud) and “G-AS” (applications store) but I’ve not digested the content yet…

The Paradox of the Derivative Work

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At last week’s  Future of Interoperability Standards in Education meeting, one of the issues that came up in the discussion group that I was in was that the creation of “derivative works” was a serious unresolved issue. I summarised this in the plenary feedback as “The ability to create derivative works is an ESSENTIAL issue. There are cases when divergence is damaging but also when [necessary] derivation is prevented. How to resolve this paradox?” This is rather cryptic as it stands so I will expand.

The paradox  is that derivation from one standard (I am using “standard” loosely to include pretty much any documented set of technical conventions) to create another is both desirable and undesirable. It is desirable because communities and applications differ, because standards mature, etc and one size will not fit all. It is undesirable because benefits are realised when more people do something in the same way, not to mention confusion arising from proliferation. It seems that there is a Network Effect with standards. I like describing this as a “paradox” as it conveys the idea that we might not be looking at the problem in the right way. An alternative description might be that there are “conflicting issues” in educational technology standardisation (see Dan Rehak’s position paper).

Having discussed this issue with a couple of people since the meeting and reflected a little, I would like to explore how we might start to resolve to the paradox (I do not aspire to actually resolve the matter into self-evident statements). My thinking has similarities to the capabilities and maturity model in Dan’s paper in trying to separate out tangled concepts.

I believe there are three strands to tease out:

  1. “Derivation” covers a multitude of different kinds of use. The term “derivative work” has an overlay of meaning from mainstream writing and publishing that is probably not appropriate for many of these “kinds of use”.
  2. There is a spectrum of intellectual contribution to a standard from the development of conceptual models to the creation of the published document.
  3. “Standard”  covers a multitude of different kinds of artifact.  Attempts to apply labels such as “formal”, “informal” or “specification” usually lead to fruitless argument.

Kinds of Derivation

I am referring here to derivation of a published document (and again using a loose meaning for “standard”). Looking at the different kinds of derivation, with labels-of-convenience that are not intended to following any conventional definitions, I suggest that some of the kinds of derivation that are relevant to standardisation are:

Ratify (cf. “ratify a treaty”)

The standard is taken as-is from its source. Although it may be re-published or referred to by a new identifier or name it is not revised. This form of derivation might be used to create a national standard that mirrors an international one. There would normally be a standing agreement that ratification can or should occur. It is immaterial from a technical point of view which one is used.

Adopt (cf. “adopt a child”)

The standard is taken on by a new organisation or ad-hoc group and the existing organisation/group relinquishes its ownership. “Ownership” implies full control over the future development, publication, transfer of rights etc. So long as the transfer is properly communicated, adoption should not necessarily lead to negative effects.

Spin-off

A snapshot of the standard is taken by a new organisation and reworked according to its documentation conventions. This is a kind of “re-work” (see below). The new work is compatible at a technical level (syntactic and semantic). The new organisation manages the creation and (editorial) maintenance within the bounds of technical compatibility while the originating organisation can continue to exert full control over its version. It is immaterial from a technical point of view which one is used at the point of departure but the originating organisation must accept more constraints on future plans as they cannot deprecate the spin-off (which will have its separate implementers).

Profile

A new work is created that includes elements of a published standard by reference. The new work may include extensions, value lists (aka vocabularies) and additional constraints. Profiling is only possible when the published standard is both persistently available (as a specific version) and structured in a way to allow for the necessary references to be made. This is not a re-work; it is more like original work with citations. While we may wish to avoid needless proliferation of profiles in the interests of realising a Network Effect, profiles are significantly less damaging than re-works as they make clear the points of reuse and divergence.

Re-work

A new work is created that takes an original and makes changes: additions, modifications and deletions. When both the original and re-work are in circulation confusion is created and the effectiveness of both new and original work is harmed. This is what I would expect would conventionally be referred to as a “derivative work”.

Spectrum of Intellectual Contribution

I am not an expert in intellectual property law and may have committed faux pas: use the comment facility.

The concept of “derivation” as expanded above does not apply equally to all of the stages of activity that underpin the publication of a standard. Here, I try to stereotype four kinds of contribution for which “derivation” is only relevant to the second two. The practical difficulty is that these kinds of contribution are often mixed together in the process. Maybe we should look to separating them into pairs and applying different processes. The stereotypes are:

Development of Conceptual Model

I recognise that following is rather shallow from a philosophical point of view and that I am adopting something of a social constructivist point of view.

Conceptual models are shared abstractions of the world. At some point in time a conceptual model must be documented in the standards process but the conceptual model is a social knowledge-construct independent of its representation/documentation. Hence conceptual models are not subject to ownership or intellectual property assertions. If it is just my idea it is not a shared abstraction: not a conceptual model. The development of a conceptual model requires broad participation and discourse to be accurate and hence useful. Evolution of a conceptual model that is documented in a published work should not be considered “derivation” of that work.

Development of Technical Approach

This would include the creation of information models, decisions on patterns and components to profile, technical trialling etc. This is the solution to a problem independent of its description. It is the knowing-how-to: techne. This kind of contribution is the realm of patent law. Contributors should expect to contribute under RAND or royalty-free terms but not to transfer all rights or they may choose to make public non-assertion covenants. A contributor is free to re-use their contribution (NB not the standard incorporating it) but not necessarily the contributions of others. This re-use is not “derivation” (as above).

Contribution of Prior Work

This category of contribution may be broken down along the same lines as “Kinds of Derivation”.

Creation of Published Document

The creation of content, review and editing of “the standard” as a published work is clearly the most concrete part of the process. Without the precisely documented expression, the underpinning conceptual model and technical approach are not directly useful as a standard. It is at this end of the spectrum that contributors should expect to grant ownership of their contribution to another legal entity. We are in the realm of copyright law and “derivation”.

Formal/Informal or Standard/Specification

I have a hunch that applying any of these labels or trying to define them is liable to cause or contribute to more confusion or argument than it is worth.

Can Grassroots Action “Save” the Education Technology Standards World from Itself?

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In the approximately-ten years that most of the well-known Ed Tech Standards bodies have been in existence, it has been hard work to make but a little progress. Why is this? I believe one factor is that there was a premature rush to create high-status specifications and formal standards. There is, however, some light at the end of the tunnel as there is growing evidence (anecdote maybe?) that more grass-roots models may be effective.

I have written a short document to explore this and possible synergies between formal and informal approaches (MS Word) as a  position paper for a meeting on Jan 12th 2010. Other position papers may be found on the meeting page.