Over the past week, we have been inundated with articles surfacing in response to the UK government’s first open standards roundtable discussion hosted by the Cabinet Office that was held on the 4^th of April. It was described as “a resounding call to scrap the government’s policy on open standards“, as Mark Ballard from Computer Weekly wrote here in an article titled “Proprietary lobby triumphs in first open standards showdown”.

The Cabinet Office also wrote its version of events in this article “Are open standards a closed barrier?” The article included this statement…

The majority of the attendees considered that open standards, as defined in the policy, would close down the Government’s ability to benefit from an alternative standards development model and limit our choice – not least because they considered that the definition excludes standards that are made available on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

This seemed to be a big U-turn and possibly not a big surprise to individuals like @GlynMoody, who wrote earlier this year, UK Government Betrayal of Open Standards Confirmed and also its follow up article published just yesterday How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards I.

Another excellent article written by Simon Wardley also expressed frustration of the first roundtable event in his article titled “The Unpleasant Whiff of Lobbyists”. He too echoed @GlynMoody’s statement in an excerpt from his post below…

OK, so lets be clear. In one year we’ve gone from overwhelming support in a wide survey for both the open standards definition and those open standards be royalty free to attendees of one roundtable arguing that such open standards could be detrimental to competition and innovation precisely because they’re royalty free.

I have a reasonably good sense of smell for the influence of paid lobbyists. This smacks of an OOXML re-run.

If you’re in the UK tech scene then wake up! In my honest opinion, this feels like of our Government being lobbied that royalty free Open Standards will hurt competition & innovation in the software world. Expect lots of mock academic research and claims that adopting open standards will cost tens if not hundred of millions ..

Support for Open Standards by Richard Harvey

Given the outcry from open standards practitioners, evangelists and enthusiasts, Richard Harvey (Linux admin – @ric_harvey) has setup a website to help people to answer the consultation here – Support for Open Standards, which I urge you to join and answer as Dr. Jeni Tennison / @JeniT from the TSO did here and showed on her blog UK Open Standards Consultation blog.

I would also like to repeat Jeni’s call to answer the consultation with the three steps below

1. Respond to the consultation — made even easier by this response form developed by Ric Harvey
2. Attend the events — these seem pretty full now, but try to get in if you can
3. Spread the message — blog and tweet and write to raise awareness of the importance and impact that this consultation could have

Keep government tech open source

There is a fantastic interview with Richard Harvey in the .net magazine website about his efforts. My favourite bit was where he answers the question fron .net “On open source, the anti-arguments sometimes centre around longevity and quality. How can and should the government protect its investments in terms of deciding what products and technologies to use?”

And Richard answers

We need to look at the bodies that govern the standards and software that is proposed. If you take HTML5 as an open standard, you can see it’s got a good structure around it in the form of W3C. When looking at open source products there are also plenty of fantastic examples of commercially supported projects where you are free to use the software but can buy support as a safety net if needed.

My own response to the consultation includes recommendations about choosing software and standards carefully, and potentially setting up an advisory panel to aid with this. This should be a coalition of industry spokespersons, engineers and developers. You need a range of skills to make sure the right decision is made.

I couldn’t agree more with his answer. We need this advisory panel to steer our way into a more transparent and open government. Our government now, is in a transition to make public services more effective and efficient by becoming more open. Therefore we need to start envisioning what the big picture of an OPEN GOV looks like.

The bigger picture of OPENNESS

We started off with the social media movement, where the government wanted to communicate more openly and effectively with citizens using freely available platforms. Then we realized we had to be able to use data and make it readable in open formats so anybody can access, use and do innovative stuff with them. And now we are onto the next step of transparency where open standards is now on stage to ensure the momentum for openness and usability is carried throughout government practices.

Next, we will be realizing the possibilities of open source softwares (OSS) being used to utilize for big and complex government projects. Just think about it. We started the chain of events with open communication with the public and opening up our data. We then started to create partnerships and bridges between government agencies, industries and citizens by exchanging data and documents using open standards.

All of this comes down to not only the ability for government to be more effective and efficient in its delivery of service, but to also come at a must smaller cost to the government. If you want to be OPEN and effective in a society that is going through a recession, you’ve got to be affordable and interoperable in the long run!

The lack of open standards impact on citizens when they need it the most

In any case, where we are talking about campaigning or supporting a cause, we often talk ‘up’ our causes. So you’d probably be expecting me to talk about how wonderful open standards and open source are to you, me and the government. But I’d like to take a different approach and take a real life scenario, where actual lives are affected by the lack of open standards in and between government agencies. Because there is no greater time where citizens will need the government’s assistance other than when they are in desperate need of information and help.

Take scenario number 1: Hurricane Katrina

In ther aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the US, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), established an internet site for victims of hurricane to register for aid. Unfortunately not everyone was able to access that over the internet because of incompatibility problems. Those using the Linux operating system, some using a Macintosh, or anyone really using the Firefox browser was unable to register for aid online.

So there was interoperability on the physical layer, there was interoperability at the network layer and the transport layer and the session layer. But there was a incompatibility of applications at the application layer, which prevented exchange of information over the internet for these hurricane victims. Fortunately you could still register through the telephones, so there was the mechanism but there was a denial of access due to applications.

Take scenario number 2: Thailand’s Tsunami

Another surprising example of government impeded in serving its citizens because of these incompatibilities, specifically between standards, involving the government of Thailand exchanging electronic documents after the Tsunami.

Some information could not be exchanged, because they used throughout different government agencies, different document formats. So this situation contributed to the government launching an open standards initiative so this will never happen again.

(Source: http://youtu.be/sqMR6pe0N_g)

Why Open Standards are important

Key points from this video:-

1. It is important from a long term perspective of humanity recording its knowledge and sharing it and transfering it to the next generation also.
2. Standards can be done in several ways. And the best way is if there are three main criterias; everybody can read it, everybody can implement it and everybody can use it for free.
3. Your data can be opened in multiple platforms, so its all interoperable. And its about keeping that interoperability available so no matter what vendor you as a consumer choose, your data is not going to be lost when you send it to someone else who’s using a different vendor’s product.
4. Open standard is a standard where the actual standard itself is maintained by a reputable, vendor neutral international body.
5. If something is stored in open standard, there is a very, very high probability that the data can be retrieved 10 years down the line, 20 years down the line, 100 years down the line.
6. As we go into the future where there is an enormous amount of government to government collaboration and government to citizens interactions, that data cannot be in proprietary formats.
7. No one should ever be restricted to their ability to access public information based upon the kind of technology they use to access that information or the manner which it’s saved. So certainly in the context of public documents, it is absolutely essential that those documents be saved and stored in an open manner

In a world where people exchange information in many different languages and dialects, it is important that there are common reference points that make interaction possible. Once the basic rules are followed, everything else becomes possible. Open standards give us the means to talk to one another whatever applications, operating systems or computer language we use. “If I can’t talk the language of your proprietary format, I can’t hear what you say”, and conversation becomes impossible.

Make conversations possible!

So, echoing Richard’s call, let’s make conversations possible not just through social media platforms and mobile applications… With government counterparts now bridging the digital divide in our society, let’s not make their efforts meaningless by lifting the bridge back up with unaccessible documents and information. Support for Open Standards! If anyone wants me to publish their response on this blog, feel free to send if over to me and I will happily publish it!

Some other blog posts worth noting here are: -

• UK Government struggles with a simple word – “open” (finally, a real debate!)
• UK Government open standard consultation (cont’d)
• Microsoft hustled UK retreat on open standards, says leaked report
• Cabinet Office: no lobby influence on open standards

It is clear from these articles that there is a great call for the issues surrounding open standards in government to be discussed in a more transparent and open platform. I, myself have been strucked by recent events and am in the middle of organizing an event (@OpenGovSummit & website) that will endeavor to gather the best individuals who can advise and talk about open standards and the use open source software in government in a more proactive and honest manner. Please get in touch with me, if you wish to get involved.

To make sure you don’t miss out on any other bits of information concerning open standards and open source in the UK government, please make sure to follow the Cabinet Offices dashboard on NetVibes.

Hope this was useful!

@Liz_Azyan
@OpenGovSummit

Ever since the launch of open data here in the UK by Sir Tim Bernes-Lee in  January 2010 with data.gov.uk (who ReadWriteWeb says actually put the US version Data.gov to shame due to the volume of data data.gov.uk offered was far more than the U.S. site), we here in the UK have seen some interesting stuff coming out from raw data.

There has been much talk recently at the Guardian regarding whether or not open data can actually create more efficient services. For fellow enthusiasts, this statement itself makes you want to jump out of your seats and say YES!  But for many others, the statement still remains a question. Can it or does it not?

Or as young people might say these days, is it a STUD or a DUD???

GOLD STAR

Tiny details aside, we’ve had some marvellous efforts by our friends OpenlyLocal who are collecting information on which local councils have open data. And also LinkedGov founded by my good uni friend Hadley Beeman who has setup a community project to collaboratively clean and make usable data from local authorities and other public bodies.  NESTA has also been doing some useful things too with their ‘Make It Local’ campaign.

SIR TIM BERNES-LEE

Need I say more? I’ll leave it to the man himself to tell him why open data is relevant, plus a reference to Paul Clarkes blog!

THE SHINY THING

The idea of open data and doing wonderful things with it in the forefront might be an attractive thing but its not always useful. So how do we know if that information is useful to the people we serve?  How do we, as local authorities help assist developers to identify citizen’s issues? With the thousands of data available and the variety of services we deliver, how do we give our data A VOICE?  Or more importantly, how do we GIVE CITIZENS A VOICE? And also how do we give LOCAL AUTHORITIES A VOICE?

THE VOICE

Ideally in a perfect world, we’d have developers, citizens and local government sitting together in a room with tea and biscuits and talk about our problems and find ‘Really Useful’ solutions. Although this might be happening already, it needs to be happening on a larger scale. Like Lee Bryant from Headshift said (which I completely agree with and could not put any better)…

I would strongly urge developers to answer the call to get involved, and ideally to avoid obsessing about tiny details of data formats and licensing in favour of actually building something that is (a) useful and (b) communicable to normal people rather than just data geeks. It is easy to forget that what we are doing here is so utterly marginal in terms of both investment and impact that it barely registers on either government’s or citizens’ radar right now. But there is no doubt in my mind that this is where government should be headed if it is serious about engaging better, improving services and getting more value out of existing investment.

A REALLY USEFUL EVENT

With that quote, it is my pleasure to announce a ‘Really Useful’ event (#RU11) that will be happening within 6 months (both online and offline) where it aims to: -

• To seek innovative ways of using local datasets in ways that help citizens by taking a user led approach
• Create a collaborative space for policy and service managers to help shape developments based on user need using customer centric intelligence
• Make use of existing standards and influence further enhancement of standards
• To support the development of web and mobile applications and web services to support the sector in using its data to support improvement, efficiency and innovation
• To identify and remove barriers to innovative developments using local datasets
• To facilitate collaboration between different areas of public sector

REALLY USEFUL 2011 (#RU11) EVENT STRUCTURE

• 1st July – The first event will identify possible apps and uses for open datasets. Developers and LA users will be able to discuss feasibility, build business cases and sustainability models and functional specifications. All apps going forward should have a sponsor. (Register interest by emailing liz.azyan@camden.gov.uk, kindly indicate 1st July event in subject heading)

• August (TBC) - The outputs from the initial day(s) will be posted on a COP site and developers and La users will improve the specifications and post new ideas. Sponsors will find datasets and remove obstacles wherever possible.

• September (TBC) – LG group envisage a two day event where developers can come together and continue to realise the most popular specifications. (Register interest by emailing liz.azyan@camden.gov.uk, kindly indicate ‘September event’ in subject heading)

• October/November (TBC) – Further work to take place on the CoP: look for opportunities for deployment/distribution and productisation etc

• December (TBC) – The developer teams return to showcase their apps, tell of success, lessons learnt etc. This event would be open to a much wider audience- useful to involve central gov and also CAs and cllrs from local government. (Register interest by emailing liz.azyan@camden.gov.uk, kindly indicate ‘December event’ in subject heading)

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

The ‘Really Useful’ event also wants to hear from you about your apps and hopefully (time permitted) review it too! So if you have an exciting app that you developed from open data in local government and want to share it with the world, drop by our forum and stick your link HERE!

We’re looking forward to being ‘Really Useful’! Are you?

Liz Azyan (Really Useful Enthusiast)

UK Universities on MySpace

List of UK Universities Flickr Pages

Please take a few mins to complete this survey on Social media Usage in HEIs.

Introductory session

The first thing you noticed as soon as you walk into the lecture hall where the introductory talks were being held is the Twitterwall on the screen. This is the second event I’ve attended that had this and I find it really livens up the mood and certainly grabs people’s attention. Just have a look at the tweets…

catmachine:  http://twitpic.com/bx04p – Tweets going up on this big screen… so if I post a photo of it, instant recursion.

marcus67:  Just so I can get on the screen again!

boagworld:  They have a twitterwall at #iwmw2009. That is asking for trouble! One could write very rude messages. http://twitpic.com/bx0dh

gmcaleese:  enjoying the twitter wall

I found it quite funny and everyone seemed to have a bit of fun with it which was quite expected, if you ask me Though if there was one thing I would say is, I wished the background to the text wasn’t black as it was hard to see the coloured text on that background. Possibly next time use white or a light colour so it could be easier on the eyes??? (Just a suggestion!)

Keith Brooke‘s introductory slides and speech

If you flick through the slides, you’ll see all the wonderful descriptions and pictures of University of Essex and also the web team who are involved in IWMW2009. There are some hilarious pictures up there, so be sure to check it out! You won’t regret it !

Keynote Speech – Derek Law (Strathclyde Uni) “Headlights on Dark Roads” this is a title of a song by Snow Patrol btw…

Derek Law – “Headlight on Dark Roads” IWMW2009 from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

I have to say I’m really impressed the way the slides were being made immediately before and during the actual speech. This is a very rare occasion at events like this, so a big “Well done” to the organizers for being on top of things. Its the little things that really matter sometimes and I was pleasantly pleased. Thank you UKOLN!

Derek starts off by asking by saying “Everyone thinks it is a good thing to have a library, but no one is very clear why” (via @iwmwlive).  This is a very fair point just looking by the way people depend on the internet to find out mostly about anything.  Derek also stresses that “we have reached a fundamental tipping point in HEI (via @boagworld)”. And this seems to be down to the failure of of libraries or librarians causing complancey, lack of underpinning philosophy and the rise of managerial technocrat (via @jaducms).

The failure to engage with technology…

There is definitely a sense of failure to understand what do we actually do with technology once we have it i.e. failure to engage with e-resources (via @jaducms). Its almost like having an iPhone or any smart phone for that matter and only using it for phone calls and text. You have it because its nice and shiny and you were told it could do all those fancy technical dancing features .. but in the end you end up using it like any old phone anyways.  It seems that we are more obsessed with licenses and digitizing oddities (via @jaducms).

There was an interesting bit in Derek’s presentation that made me sit up in my seat which was…

jamesclay:  “Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from @stephenfry ”

jamesclay:  “A further 11% is his 680,176 followers replying ‘ @stephenfry LOL!’ & ‘ @stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me’”

I definitely thought that was hilarious because I follow @stephenfry myself and he definitely tweets his pants off! LOL

On a more serious note, Derek mentioned that there is a possibility of shifting college life to google and some uni’s are already using google mail too! (via @jaducms) I wish my uni would use google mail…:-s So there’s definitely a possibility for this to happen as its really not that big of a leap… or is it?

Images replacing words….

So according to Derek, “we are moving to image-based cultural reference points, rather than word-based” (via @iwmwlive). I couldn’t agree more, I mean I even find myself moving another step forward and saying that I think we are moving to video-based cultural reference points as I use YouTube as my primary search engine just as much as I use google. I mean lets look at some of the facts pointed out from the twitterstream

iwmwlive:  We are moving away from authority to consensus: 57% of teenagers create content for the Internet

pierotintori:  #iwmw2009 “73% of students use the internet more than the library”

Why write it when you can record it???

As an academic myself who finds writing papers quite fiddly and would rather blog, I definitely find Law’s opinion on a new way of documenting research methodologies to be really appealing!

iwmwlive:  why write a research methodology when you can just video the experiment and upload it?

pierotintori:  #iwmw2009 why write a science paper, create a video and publish it http://www.jove.com/

Conclusion….So what is the Digital Overlap Strategy?

This was actually something I felt I have to share.. its certainly something you could take away and implement straight away at your institutions! The way you do it is… BY KEEPING YOUR FINGERS CROSS!

iwmwlive:  most universities are employing a digital overlap strategy to deal with the problems they are facing.

marydeeo:  Law: “digital overlap strategy” – cross your fingers and hope for the best

webpackets:   – liking the digital overlap strategy – am going to use that one

kammer:  Excellent anecdote from Derek Law ultimately defining ‘digital overlap strategy’ (ie keep your fingers crossed). All too familiar.

Links for this session worth checking out!

1. Oxford library website (via @j4)
2. OpenWetWare – marydeeo: Law: social networking moving into real research apps, OpenWetware allows sharing among scientists
3. Journal of Visualized Experiments (Jove) – Love it!
4. Open Research Notebooks
5. Catch my earlier review of IWMW2009 – The good, the bad and the ugly

Hope you’ve found this useful!

Liz xx

List of UK Universities and their Departments on YouTube

As a social media researcher, I always welcome any research looking into social media, so I’m more than happy to help coordinate and spread the word for Jadu to get as many research participants to complete the survey. Thank you to all of those who have already completed the survey. Your participation is truly appreciated. Please also help us to spread the word among your colleagues and contacts in HEI. The more people participate, the better and more relevant the results will be. So if you have seen it and haven’t done it yet, please take a few minutes to answer the survey. I will also be looking into the results and giving my own opinions on it.

Please take a few mins to complete this survey on Social media Usage in HEIs.

An overview of the research survey

Social media technologies are providing a new way of communicating within Higher Education Institutions(HEIs) and externally with other institutions, students and the academic environment. This survey has been developed by Jadu, a leading content management solutions provider, to gain a current picture of the challenges, applications and benefits of social media within HEIs across the UK. In developing the content of the survey we have sought feedback from web managers within a number of HEIs.

TYVM

@Liz_Azyan

As some of you might already know, I’ve long been a local government online engagement researcher and have been concentrating alot of my research energy in that sector. But now I’m branching out into other sectors and I’m happy to say that #imwm2009 was my first HEI gig! I even accidently ended up conducting my own barcamp on social media! Ah, it seems the only way to get me to talk at unconferences nowadays is to ambush me LOL. Same thing happened to me at another unconference for #localgovcamp, which you can check out here.

Please take a few mins to complete this survey on Social media Usage in HEIs.

I’ll be writing other blog posts about the event in separate posts so you won’t have to keep scrolling down a long post. Stay tuned to those posts that will be tweeted on my twitter feed @Liz_Azyan. To get updates, you have to start following me  :-)

Feedback, feedback, feedback….

The good stuff…

Let’s talk a bit about some of the stuff I liked about the conference…

There were alot of things that this conference did get right in terms of using social media to fully aggregate the workshops content effectively online. Check out how #iwmw2009 came alive online and created real-time conversations and feedback …

1. Slideshare of all presentation slides (Excellent!) – I always find myself needing to ask for these at events and often take a long time to become available. So, well done!
2. The Twitter Feed @IWMW used to push out general content throughout the workshop.
3. The CoverItLive! live blogging at IWMWlive (twitter feed specifically for this live event) was made available to allow people to follow the event live as its happening and also works well as a documented version of all tweets throughout the event.
4. The IWMWBlog was a great central point to catch all the video interviews, summaries of presentations, as well as other relevant stuff.
5. The live streaming of the event! Brilliant! First time I’ve seen 2 camera ladies actually instead of camera men! Did anyone else notice this???
6. The tag for the event. Now there are some things I like about the tag and some things I don’t like. I like the fact that you can distinguish the talks by adding either #p1, #p2 etc to the #iwmw2009 tag. But I really feel that the tag should have been shorter i.e. #iwmw09 or even #iwmw. Everyone knows when tweeting, chars are really valuable. Even taking off 2 chars can help people to retweet (RT) easily without cutting or shortening any tweets.
7. The IWMW2009 Netvibes page. I really like the use of Netvibes, it allows you to see all the content and media stuff on one page and you can configure it according to your own preference.
8. The IWMW2009 official blogger – I know there was an official blogger (which I regretfully forgot the name of ). I tried to find her name on the UKOLN website and blog but failed to find it. Please let me know if anyone else finds it! I thought it was a brilliant idea to get a designated person to cover the event. This is becoming more and more of an essential ingredient for any event. I think in the near future, events management everywhere will have to invite in official bloggers just like conferences have press boxes, events like this will have blogger boxes! Its not an easy task and is often more tiring than one might think. But I feel the official blogger for this event did a spectacular job and she definitely deserves alot of praise for what she’s done. Well done!

Other stuff I liked…

1. The marque where we had all our meals… felt like we were at a wedding the way the table and marque was setup with chandeliers hanging everywhere.
2. The food was good too, a great variety for meat eaters as well as vegetarians. There was also BBQ for one of the evenings which was sponsored by Jadu. Thanks @surajkika (CEO of Jadu)!
3. The social activites organized throughout the event… the outings and barcamps were all designed so we could actually do some networking. This is absolutely essential for any event because often when people come a long way to attend events, they are not only there for the content but mostly so for the people they meet there. And with social media making contents from events available in real-time, surely the only thing setting the delegates apart from the online event followers is the networking and face-to-face interaction.

Things I didn’t like…

1. The fact that I couldn’t connect to the internet in accommodation. Why wasn’t the setup instructions included in the  accommodation welcome pack or found in the room? Why couldn’t it be made available through all the social media channels i.e. Twitter, blog, main event website? If it was made available, it was not clearly stated. Being at an event where it was highly likely to be attended by ‘geeks’, it was disappointing that most of us couldn’t get onto the internet whilst staying in the accommodation. Plus what made things worst was, even my 3G dongle didn’t have coverage at times inside the accommodation and in the main lecture hall. The fact that you couldn’t use the phone in the room also caused a hassle to get direct connection to IT support who’s phone number was not provided meaning you had to go down to their offices to get help… which is usually after office hours after our talks/activities are finished.
2. No power plugs/extension for laptops in main lecture hall. I think this is a new thing event organizers have to pay attention to now that more people are tweeting during events. My laptop died a couple of hours into the event which really made me lose interest in tweeting….
3. Difficulty trying to find out what talk is up next. There should be an easy way to look up where to go and what talk is next up in the schedule without having to look through pieces of paper. Like having the schedule behind name tags, like it was done at another event I attended in NYC that you can see here.

So those are my first impressions of the IWMW2009 event, look out for more blog posts to come!

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out…

1. The HEIs Social Media usage research survey (it’ll only take 10 mins for your time and you have the opportunity to win an iPod Touch, thanks to Jadu!)
2. My UK Universities Twitterleague (currently being updated manually by myself -hoping to create a database with some help of volunteers? – so please bare with me regarding updates)
3. My UK Universities Facebook Fan Pages list
4. My UK Universities Twitter Accounts list

Hope you’ve found this useful!

Follow me on Twitter @Liz_Azyan

Important: Please help this research to understand how social media is being used in HEIs by participating in this survey here. One lucky winner will have the opportunity to win an iPod Touch. So what are you waiting for? Get in!

Here you will find the UK universities Twitterleague according to number of follwers as of 10th August 2009. To be added to the list, kindly either email me at research@lizazyan.com or leave your details in the comment box.