Meritocracy in Open Standards: Vision or Mirage

Posted on by

Few would argue for privilege over merit in general terms and the idea of “meritocracy” is close to the heart of many in the Open Source Software (OSS) community. How far can the ideal of meritocracy be realised? Are attempts to implement meritocratic principles in the development of open standards (using “standards” to include virtually any documented set of technical conventions) visionary or beset my mirages?

What follows is a first pass at answering that rather rhetorical question. I have avoided links as I’m not trying to point fingers (and you would be wrong in thinking there are any between-the-lines references to organisations or individuals).

A meritocracy requires both a dimension of governance and a dimension of value. The latter, “value”, incorporates both the idea that something should be measurable and that there is consensus over desirable measure and its association with positive outcomes of the endeavour. In the absence of the measurable quantity that could be applied in a bureaucratic way we have a hegemony or a club. The Bullingdon Club is not a meritocracy. I suggest the following questions should be asked when considering implementing a meritocracy:

  1. Have we recognised that a meritocracy must be situated in a context? There must be some endeavour that the system of merit is supporting and the suitability of a meritocratic system can only be judged in that context. There is no universal method.
  2. Do we understand what success looks like for the endeavour? What are the positive outcomes?
  3. Is there a human behaviour or achievement that can be associated with realising the positive outcomes?
  4. Are there measures that can be associated with these behaviours or achievements?
  5. Can this/these human endeavours be dispassionately evaluated using the measures?

Clear and coherent answers can be provided to these questions for OSS endeavours focussed on fixing bugs, improving robustness, improving performance etc. The answers become rather more vague or contentious if we start to include decisions on feature-sets, architecture or user interface design. Many successful OSS efforts rely on a different approach, for example the benevolent dictator, alongside some form of meritocracy.

So: what of “meritocracy in open standards”? Posing the five questions (above), I suggest:

  1. The context is open standards development. There are differing interpretations of “open”, generally revolving around whether it is only the products that are available for use without impediment or whether participation is also “open”. It only makes sense to consider a meritocracy in the latter case so we seem to have a recognisable context. NB: the argument as to whether open process is desirable is a different one to how you might govern such a process and is not addressed here
  2. Success of the open standards endeavour is shown by sustained adoption and use. Some people may be motivated to participate in the process by ideas of public good, commercial strategy etc but realising these benefits are success factors for their participation and not of the endeavour per se. I would like to place questions of morality alongside these concerns and outside consideration of the instrument: open standards development.
  3. This is where we start running in sand inside an hourglass. Anecdotes are many but simple relationships hard to find. Some thoughtfully constructed research could help but it seems likely that there are too many interacting agents and too many exogenous factors, e.g. global finance, to condense out “simple rules”. At this point we realise that the context should be scoped more clearly: not all areas of application of open standards have the same dynamics, for example: wireless networking and information systems for education.  Previous success as a contributor to open standards may be a reasonable indicator but I think we need to look more to demonstration of steers-man skills. The steers-man (or woman) of a sail-driven vessel must consider many factors – currents, wind, wave, draught, sea-floor, etc – when steering the vessel. Similarly, in open standards development we also have many factors influencing the outcome in our complex system: technical trends, supplier attitudes (diverse), attitudes of educational institutions, government policy change, trends in end-user behaviour…
  4. Not really. We could look to measures of approval by actors in the “complex system” but that is not a meritocratic approach although it might be a viable alternative.
  5. Not at all. Having stumbled at hurdle 4 we fall.

It looks like meritocracy is more mirage than vision and that we should probably avoid making claims about a brave new world of meritocratic open standards development. Some anti-patterns:  “Anyone can play” is not a meritocracy; it depends on who you know, its not a meritocracy. The latter, cronysim, is a dangerous conceit.

There are many useful methods of governance that are not meritocratic; i.e. methods that would satisfy an “act utilitarian”. I suggest we put merit to one side for now or look for a substantially more limited context.

Linked Data: Where is the Low-hanging Fruit?

Posted on by

Here are my thoughts on some generic considerations, some mentioned in the recent SemTech meeting and some I jotted down following the CETIS Conference, on where low hanging fruit may be found. NB these are “generic” and not specific; the idea is that they might be useful in judging the likelihood of success of some specific good/cool/potential ideas. I am referring here to exposure of Linked Data on the public web. In no particular order:

  • Ariadne’s Thread. Does the current state of (poor) information management present a problem and is there resolve to find your way out of the maze? If it has become necessary to sit down and get your domain model straight and re-organise/re-engineer (some of) your information systems then you have done most of the hard work necessary for exposing Linked Data (i.e. Open to some degree) and you could usefully adopt Linked Data principles for private use.
  • Ox Pecker. Is there a mutual benefit between you and another data provider? Can this be amplified by explicit technical, financial or effort (etc) support one or both ways? This builds on the essential attribute of linking.
  • Sloping Shoulders. Can you avoid creating an ontology? No-one else will care about it if you do.
  • Aspirin. Does anyone have a headache that can be made better? Is there an institutional/business problem that can be solved? (this is not the same as Ariadne’s Thread)
  • Blue Peter. Is the creation or acquisition and processing and dissemination of information already something you do? Is the quality and availability of the information something you invest effort in? This is a ready-made candidate for Linked Data.
  • Cow Path. Is information you already make available (as web pages or PDF etc) used by others in ways you know about and understand?
  • UFO. Do people want to refer to something you have or do but don’t have an unambiguous way of identifying what they are referring to? Could you provide a URI for the thing and information about it?
  • 2+2=5. Is there clear value to be gained from linking the information that is to be exposed? Can people do something new, do they want to and will they continue to want to?
  • Chatham House. Avoid exposing data that identifies, or could identify, a person.

EU Ministerial Declaration: studying, open standards and more

Posted on by

The Malmö Declaration (18th Nov 2009), a unanimous declaration by EU member state ministers responsible for eGovernment makes a number of statements that are worth extracting:

“Our public administrations should therefore:
…
15. Create a noticeable and positive change in the ease with which citizens can study, work, reside and retire in any Member State. We will enable and support the creation of seamless cross-border eGovernment services by focusing our efforts on these life-stages.

…
21. Pay particular attention to the benefits resulting from the use of open specifications in order to deliver services in the most cost-effective manner. We will ensure that open specifications are promoted in our national interoperability frameworks in order to lower barriers to the market. We will work to align our national interoperability frameworks with applicable European frameworks…

22. Regard innovation as an integral part of our way of working. We will promote innovation in eGovernment services through research and development, pilot projects and other implementation schemes. We will explore and develop the possibilities offered by new open and flexible service architectures and new computing paradigms.”

As a JISC Innovation Support Centre that spends a considerable amount of time supporting pilots and working (often invisibly to outsiders) on European and international open standards, including two draft European standards to support entry and exit transitions to periods of formal study, CETIS clearly has affinity with these declarations.

Adoption of Service Oriented Architecture for Enterprise Systems in Education: Recommended Practices

Posted on by

IMS recently released a white paper with the un-catchy but informative title “Adoption of Service Oriented Architecture for Enterprise Systems in Education: Recommended Practices“. While it is fair to say that no publication on SOA can avoid someone taking issue with something, this paper does a pretty good job of meeting its aims of providing those in the (mostly post-compulsory) education technology audience with relevant information on the reasons why they should at least consider service orientation and how they might go about moving in that direction.

“Education has many unique challenges associated with integrating business and academic processes and technologies.  This Recommended Practices for Education on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) from IMS Global Learning Consortium filters the information on the current state of SOA concepts, tools and practices and provides guidance on when adoption of SOA is appropriate in Education to overcome some of its core challenges.” (from IMS)

We (CETIS) produced a complementary look at the service-orientation back in March 2009, which we will update in 2010, with a similarly un-catchy but informative (we hope) title “Technology Change in Higher and Further Education – a service oriented approach“.

Enjoy…

Progress on IMS Learning Information Services (formerly Enterprise v2)

Posted on by

Here are some slightly-edited notes I provided to colleagues following my attendance at the October 2009 IMS Quarterly Learning Information Services (LIS) project team meeting. LIS is the next generation of what has previously been called “IMS Enterprise” and brings together the capabilities of batch processing (original IMS Enterprise) and the more “chatty” capabilities of IMS Enterprise Services alongside other refinements and additions.

The meeting was mostly oriented around:

  1. Demonstration by Oracle and a presentation by Sungard about their implementation of LIS
  2. Discussion on (minor) modifications to support requirements from IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)
  3. Mapping out next steps

The headline news is that a public draft release is expected in December this year. The core specification is judged to be fit for purpose and further work, after public draft, will focus on the definition of the “HE profile” and the conformance requirements.

Conformance specification and testing is acknowledged to be a difficult problem but there is interest in using BPEL to create what are effectively unit test scripts. Oracle seems to have taken this approach and there is some literature relating to it. It is my conjecture that a library of unit tests (in BPEL) managed by the to-be-instantiated “Accredited Profile Management Group” for LIS in IMS would be a practical approach to testing implementations of LIS.

The demonstrations:

Linda Feng (Oracle) showed their Campus Solutions “Student Administration Integration Pack” working with Sakai (Unicon version), Inigral Schools on Facebook app) and Beehive (Oracle collaboration software). Linda has recorded a ViewLet (best viewed full-screen). The Sakai integration used “normal” LIS SOAP web services but the other two used an ESB (specifically the Oracle service bus). The Beehive case is worthy of note as the integration was achieved, as I understand it, without any code mods to Beehive: LDAP was used for core person (an LDAP binding for LIS has been developed) and the existing REST API for Beehive was translated to from LIS SOAP via the ESB. Inigral is also REST based. It was reported that the Beehive integration took a couple of person weeks to achieve and I can see quite a few people following the ESB route.

Sungard had only just completed a code sprint and were not in a position to demo. They expect to have both batch and chatty versions completed in Q1 2010. They did comment that many customers were already using “old” Enterprise batch processing but fully intend to move to LIS (and leap Enterprise Services v1.0).

I gather Moodle Rooms is also close to completing a LIS implementation although this is probably currently implemented against an old draft of LIS (the press release is cagey and doesn’t mention LIS)

At the terminal “summit day” of the quarterly, Michael Feldstein did a showman-like intro to LIS which was video-ed (I’ll link it in when posted) and he has subsequently blogged about supplier inclinations towards LIS.

Universities and Colleges in the Giant Global Graph

Posted on by

Earlier this week I facilitated a session at the 2009 CETIS Conference to explore some of the opportunities that Linked Data might offer to universities and colleges and to help us (CETIS in particular but also JISC and our peer “innovation support centre”, UKOLN) work out what work should be done to move us closer to realising benefits in the management and delivery of Higher and Further Education from adoption of Linked Data principles either by universities and colleges or by other public or private bodies that form part of the overall H/FE system. An approximately factual account of the session, relevant links etc is available from the Universities and Colleges in the Giant Global Graph session page. This post contains more personal rambling opinion.

Paul Walk seems to be the first of the session participants to blog. He captures one of the axes of discussion well and provides an attractive set of distinctions. It seems inevitable that the semantic vultures will circle about terminological discussions and it is probably best for us to spell out what we mean rather than use sweeping terms like “Linked Data” as I do in the opening paragraph. My inclination is not to be quite as hard-line as Paul about the necessity for RDF to be used to call it “Linked Data”. Vultures circle. In future I’ll draw more clear distinctions between the affordances of open data vs linked data vs semantic web, although I tried to put whitespace between linked data and semantic web in my session intro (PPT). Maybe it would be more clear for some audiences to consider the affordances of particular acts such as selecting a recognised data licence of various types, assigning persistent URIs to things, … but this is not useful for all discourse. Talking of “recognised data licence[s]” may also allow us to sidestep the “open” meme conflation: open access, open source, open process, open-for-reuse…

Actually, I’m rather inclined to insert a further distinction for and use the (fantasy) term “Minty Data” for linked-data-without-requiring-RDF (see another of Paul Walk’s posts on this). Why? Well: it seems that just posting CSV, while that might be better than nothing from an open data point of view doesn’t promise the kind of network effects that 4-rules linked data (i.e. Berners-Lee rules) offers. On the other hand it does seem to me that we might be able to get quite a long way without being hard core and are a lot less likely to frighten people away. I’m also aware that there is likely to be a paradigm shift for many in thinking and working with web architecture, in spite of the ubiquitousness of the web.

Minty Data rules, kind-of mongrel of ROA and 4-Rules Linked Data:

  1. Assign URIs to things people are likely to want to refer to
    • having first thought through what the domain model behind them is (draw a graph)
    • make the URIs hackable, predictable, structured
    • consider Logical Types (ref Bertrand Russell)
    • don’t change them until Hell freezes over
  2. use HTTP URIs for the usual reasons
  3. Return something machine-readable e.g. JSON, Atom
      • and something human-readable (but this ISN’T Minty Data)

      For Extra-strong mints:

      1. Link to other things using their URIs, especially if they were minted by you
      2. When returning information about a thing, indicate what class(es) of things it belongs to
      3. If the “thing” is also described in one or more encyclopedia or other compendium of knowledge, express that link in a well-known way.
        • and if it isn’t described but should be, get it added if you can

        There was a bit of discussion in the conference session about the perceived investment necessary to make Linked Data available. I rather felt that this shouldn’t necessarily be the case given software such as D2R and Triplify. At least, the additional effort required to make Minty Data available having first thought though the domain model (information architecture) shouldn’t be much. This is, of course, not a universally-trivial pre-requisite but it is an objective with quite a lot of literature to justify the benefits to be accrued from getting to grips with it. It would be a mistake to suggest boiling the ocean; the conclusion I make is that a readiness-criterion for anyone considering exposing Linked/Minty Data is that consideration of the domain model related to that data has been considered or is judged to be feasible or desirable for other reasons.

        The BBC approach, described in many places but quoted from Tom Scott and Michael Smethurst in Talis Nodalities here,  seems to reflect the above:

        “I’d like to claim that when we set out to develop [bbc.co.uk]/programmes we had the warm embrace of the semantic web in mind. But that would be a lie. We were however building on very similar philosophical foundations.

        In the work leading up to bbc.co.uk/programmes we were all too aware of the importance of persistent web identifiers, permanent URIs and the importance of links as a way to build meaning. To achieve all this we broke with BBC tradition by designing from the domain model up rather than the interface down. The domain model provided us with a set of objects (brands, series, episodes, versions, ondemands, broadcasts etc) and their sometimes tangled interrelationships.”

        On the other hand, I do perceive a threat arising from the ready availability of software to add a sprinkle of RDF or SPARQL endpoint to an existing web application or scrape HTML to RDF, especially if RDF is the focus of the meme. A sprinkle of RDF misses the point if it isn’t also based on a well-principled approach to URIs and their assignment and the value of links; a URI isn’t just the access point for a cranky API returning structured data. The biggest threat to the Linked Data meme may be a deluge of poor quality RDF rather than an absence of it.

        Technology Forecast

        Posted on by

        PriceWaterhouseCoopers started publishing their annual Technology Forecast book as a quarterly journal during 2008 . Previous editions of the PwC Technology Forecast have focussed on the question of IT in support of increasing pressures on “business agility”, pressures also felt in post-compulsory education, whereas the latest edition pays particular attention to the increased significance of semantic web technology in practice. This latter actually seems to do a pretty good job of providing an introduction to some of the concepts and technology choices for the semantic web, at least for an IT professional.

        Objects in this Mirror are Closer than they Appear: Linked Data and the Web of Concepts

        Posted on by

        There is a whole collection of web technology that has been largely ignored or misunderstood. Sometimes we technical folk just made it over-complicated in great fits of excitement for the potential a new technology. This has probably been the case with a collection of technologies, both specifications and architectural practices, that can be grouped under the heading “semantic web”. But things are changing.

        The change is heralded by the meme of Linked Data which originated with Tim Berners-Lee in 2006. There are two really significant things about this meme: it is intelligible; it translated to real change. The really-really significant thing is that, although it is intelligible, it remains a solid foundation for some of the more pointy-headed technology; its adoption represents an important platform for change. It will affect how people think about and realise interoperability of data.

        The TED presentation by Tim Berners-Lee, “The Next Web” is a good motivational introduction to why this is a significant movement and includes a really succinct boiling-down of the technical ideas: assign URIs to concepts; relationships are links. There is nothing technically-new here. That is the point! It is intelligable.

        If Linked Data remained only an intelligable idea, it would not be so interesting. An idea that is acted upon is both more potent and, depending on the enacting agent, an indicator of changing practice. Tom Scott of BBC Earth provided an interview to PWC Technology Forecast recently, “Traversing the Giant Global Graph“, in which “Scott describes how the BBC is using Semantic Web technology and philosophy to improve the relevance of and access to content on the BBC Programmes and Music Web sites in a scalable way.” Adoption by such a high profile organisation gives those who, like CETIS, have been advocating a semantic-web-inspired approach to interoperability a real boost.

        In a completely different corner of human endeavour, the Royal Society of Chemistry has been doing things in the same flight-path. RSC Prospect enriches journal articles through chemical and biological ontology terms and the recently-acquired ChemSpider provides “access to almost 21.5 million unique chemical entities sourced from over 200 different data sources and integration to a multitude of other online services” organised according to chemical structure. These are not there yet, as Linked Data, but the direction of travel seems clear.

        When a major media player and the publishing arm of a professional society are making progress on what was esoterica only a few years ago, I think I’m safe in predicting change is afoot; sense and significance will be apparent to a wider set of people and I’m optimistic that members of the education sector will number highly in that set.

        Linked Data and the web of concepts is closer than it may appear.

        SOA and TOGAF: A Good Fit?

        Posted on by

        As both service orientation and Enterprise Architecture are current themes that JISC considers to be strategically valuable, I thought the recent article from ZapThink on the topic “SOA and TOGAF: A Good Fit?” is very timely.

        To whet your appetite, their conclusion includes:

        “How would you decide whether to use TOGAF ADM or not for your SOA initiative? If you have already adopted a SOA approach, and its working for you, then the ADM won’t necessarily add value for you in the short term. However it won’t do any harm to evaluate your approach against the ADM. You may find some valuable lessons to be learned from TOGAF. However, if you haven’t yet adopted a SOA approach, or if you are experiencing problems with your approach, then the ADM is certainly worth considering.”

        Both service-orientation and architecture are explored in “Technology Change in Higher and Further Education – a service oriented approach“, where members of CETIS and guest authors present their “takes” in the context of Higher and Further Education. This work includes many other references to work supported by JISC and various perspectives from people whose thinking we think is important.