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http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/cie-2005-08/
An Approach To Standards:
A Presentation For CIE Partners
Brian Kelly About This Talk
UKOLN This talk describes:
University of Bath • The difficulties in using
Bath open standards
Email • The layered approach
B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk developed for JISC
• The applicability of this
approach for the CIE
UKOLN is supported by:
A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
Background Background
JISC development work:
• Traditionally based on use of open standards to:
Support interoperability
Maximise accessibility
Avoid vendor lock-in
Provide architectural integrity
Help ensure long-term preservation
History:
• eLib Standards document (v1 – 1996, v2 – 1998)
• DNER Standards document (2001)
which influenced:
• NOF-digi Technical Standards
• ..
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Background Lessons Learnt
Experiences of the QA Focus (and NOF-digi
Technical Advisory Service) revealed problems:
• Lack of knowledge of standards
• Immaturity of standards
• Failure for standards to take off
• Difficulties when building on existing work
• Uncertainty of what to do if standards not
implemented correctly
• Lack of resources
• Lack of understanding (why, how, best
practices, …)
• …
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Background Need For Flexibility
A need for flexibility (lessons from OSI networking):
• Is Web (for example) is becoming over-complex?
• Lighter-weight alternatives being developed
• Responses from the commercial world
Compliance Issues
What does must mean?
• .. must comply with HTML standards
What if I don't? What if nobody does?
• .. must clear rights on digitised resources
• .. must provide properly audited accounts
There's a need to clarify meaning of must and for an
understandable & reasonable compliance regime
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Contextual Approach The Context
There will be a context to use of standards:
• The intended use:
Mainstream Innovative / research
Key middleware component Small-scale deliverable
• Available Funding & Resources:
Significant funding & training to make use of important
new standards
Minimal funding - current skills should be used
• Organisational culture:
HE vs FE
National museum vs small, volunteer organisation
• Cross-organisational cultural issues:
Multimedia (BBC) E-learning (BECTa/JISC)
• …
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Layered Approach to Standards
xxx
Policies (Catalogue?)
OSS
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Contextual Approach Scope Of The Standards Work
What should the scope of Standards Catalogue be:
• CIE development programmes
• All work
• …
Content areas will include:
• Web File formats
• Metadata Resource discovery
• E-learning Addressing
• Alerting Authentication
• E-Research …
What else?
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Implementation
How might this approach be used in practice?
Development Programme Report JISC Service
Committees Advisers
JISC JISC
Programme Manager Manager
Team
Programme XX Call / Contract Contract Contract
Proposals must comply with XYZ standard
Report must Service must …
Proposals should seek to comply with XYZ Services must
Proposals should describe approach to XYZ be in MS
Word / … and self-assess …
Projects audited to ensure compliance with … use JISC and highlight
Projects should develop self-assessment template significant
procedures and submit findings to JISC deviations from
…
Projects should submit proposed approach …
for approval/information digital information management
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Collating The Content
We are using a Wiki to
collect information about
the standards:
• Being used by a small
groups of trusted
individuals
• Avoids bottleneck for
uploading and
maintaining content
Note: the Wiki is used for
creation & maintenance of
the data and is not intended
as the final repository
At this stage, a simple template will be used.
be enhanced in future iterations.
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A www.ukoln.ac.uk
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Contextual Approach Scope / Differences
Scope of the standards catalogue
• Initially technical standards which support
interoperability across CIE partners (i.e. not in-
house Schemas)
• Initially avoid best practices and guidelines in use
of standards?
Handling Differences
• Template provides mechanism for flagging
subjective comments (e.g. maturity of standards)
• Work does not aim at reconciling differences
• Do we flag conflicts with the catalogue: "There are
conflicts over Foo vs Bar"; "JISC say 'Foo' but
BECTa say "Bar"?; …
• Do we park the conflicts for others to resolve (and
this exercise helps identify
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End Of Part 1
Any questions?
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Part 2:
Deployment And Support
Infrastructure
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Contextual Approach Publishing The Content
The Standards Catalogue:
• Needs to be available as a document which can
be easily read
• Data should be reusable and interoperable:
JISC Framework environment
For CIE
…
Plans:
• Version 1 available as document
• Data ported to CETIS's Framework software
We are currently talking to CETIS about this
• Is it possible?
• What are the resources implications?
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• …
A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
Standards For The CIE Building On The Work
The JISC work can form the basis of similar
work for the CIE (Common Information
Environment):
• Working with MLA, BBC, BECTA, …
• Pooling existing resources
• Identifying areas of agreement and
diversity
Note that the CIE work will not aim to reconcile
differences, but to identify those areas
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Standards For The CIE Standards Catalogue Process
There's a need for developing and enhancing the
standards catalogue in order to:
• Update with new standards
• Learn from feedback and experiences
Context Review Support
Infrastructure
QA
Policies Framework
Framework
Standards
User
Standards
Experiences
Compliance …
Funder's
Experiences
The Standards Catalogue can be integrated with the JISC's 'Framework'
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Standards For The CIE Access Issues
A single central repository or a distributed approach?
Context Context
Catalogue
Catalogue
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The Bigger Picture
The vision is for:
Software Use
• Modularity in approaches
to standards, accessibility, Accessibility
Context Evaluation
software, digitisation, .. Standards
Context
Policies Feedback
• Feedback mechanisms Context
Policies
Compliance Enhance
to help refine model and
advice Compliance
Policies
• Support infrastructure for Compliance
funders, projects & 3rd
parties on model and
best practices through Support
sharing via briefing
To Funders Projects 3rd Parties
documents, case studies,
events, maximising On Processes Best practices
benefits through Creative By Docs Events CC licences
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A centre expertise in
Commonsoflicences digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk
Standards For The CIE Lessons About Support
Lessons from JISC/NOF-digi programmes:
• Importance of being able to repurpose
support resources
• Need to avoid embedding generic advice
with programme-specific details
• IPR issues for support materials
Support
Context
Advice
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Standards For The CIE Support Infrastructure
Need for a support infrastructure which covers:
• Advice to Funders: Putting together Calls,
Evaluation Criteria, Contracts, etc
• Advice to Projects: Why the standards are
needed; Pros and cons of deployment strategies;
Ways of ensuring standards are being
implemented correctly
We'll build on UKOLN/AHDS QA Focus work:
• 80+ briefing documents and 30+ case studies
published
• Licensed under Creative Commons
Can CIE partners contribute to this?
Will sharing technical support materials be less
contentious than cultural heritage resources?
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Conclusions
To conclude:
• Approach to developing standards catalogue
based on QA Focus's experiences and JISC-
commissioned review
• Acknowledges importance of context
• Allows for hard-line implementation (which is
needed in some areas)
• Can be developed within a CIE context
• Need to consider wider support infrastructure
• This will be an ongoing process
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