In January 2010, JISC CETIS organised a working meeting to bring together participants across a range of standards organisations and communities to look at the future of interoperability standards in the education sector. This white paper summarises the views expressed by delegates at the meeting and presents relevant background information on present and future models for collaboration between open and informal communities and the formal standardisation system with particular reference to the current issues and barriers in specification and standard development and adoption. The PDF file of the paper is now available here.

JISC CETIS is organising a series of events to look at the future for interoperability standards in the education sector. The first meeting was held in January 2010 and the key topic was the relationship between specifications developed in informal communities, formal standards organisations and industry consortia. There were 17 position papers submitted and around 40 delegates from various international and UK-based organisations and communities attended the meeting.

My colleague and I at CETIS have drawn together the views expressed in the position papers, issues identified during the meeting and reflections on the event from the participants’ blog posts to produce an overview report on the ‘Future of Interoperability Standards in Education’. We hope this report offers some useful insights on current thinking and a basis for further debate around policy and the process of development and implementation of interoperability standards in education.

A second event about the future of interoperability standards in education will be a workshop which focuses on the technical approaches to creating standards. This will be held on the 24^th September in London. More information about the workshop is available here.