Open Standards and Open Data

Tony HirstDept of Communication and Systems,

The Open University

<Open Data>

A Brief (Recent) History of Open Public Data in the UK

March 2006

June 2009

June 2009

Sept 2009

Oct 2009

Jan 2010

May 2010

Sept 2010

Spring 2011

July 2011

Aug 2011

Aug 2011

Oct 2011

Nov 2011

Dec 2011

Feb 2012

Feb 2011

Feb 2011

=importData(“CSV_URL”)

The online CSV filebecomes a spreadsheet

becomes A DATABASE

</Open Data>

Data & Source

The UKGLF addresses the use and re-use of the following types of information:

- non-personal information subject to copyright and database right that is collected and produced by government and the public sector and which is published or accessible under access legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act or the Environmental Information Regulations (much of this information will be accessible on public sector web sites or already published by the public sector);

- previously unpublished datasets released by the public sector on portals such as data.gov.uk; and

- original and open source software and source code produced by the public sector or commissioned under Framework 1 of the NESTA agreements (see glossary) or similar agreements.

Open Source

Open SourceProcurement

<Open Standards>

Take a look around you……see that plug socket? If you’re in the UK, it should conform to British Standard BS1363 (you can read the spec if you have have you credit card to hand…). Take a listen around you… is that someone listening to an audio device playing an MP3 music file? ISO/IEC 11172-3:1993 (or ISO/IEC 13818-3:1995) helped make that possible… “that” being the agreed upon standard that let the music publisher put the audio file into a digital format that the maker of the audio device knows how to recognise and decode. (Beware, though. The MP3 specification is tainted with all sorts of patents – so you need to check whether or if you need to pay someone in order to build a device that encodes or decodes MP3 files.) If the music happens to be being played from a CD (hard to believe, but bear with me!), then you’ll be thankful the CD maker and the audio player manufacturer agreed to both work with a physical object that conforms to IEC 60908 ed2.0 (“Audio recording – Compact disc digital audio system”), and that maybe makes use of Standard ECMA-130 (also available as ISO/IEC 10149:1995). That Microsoft Office XML document you just opened somewhere? ISO/IEC 29500-1:2011. And so on…

An exercise for later?

So What Are Open Standards?

“[O]pen standards must allow all possible competitors to operate on a basis of equal access to the ability to implement the standard” [An Economic Basis for Open Standards, RA Ghosh]

“Standard - codified knowledge providing specifications for interfaces between software, systems

or the documents and data that pass between them.” [Open Standards Consultation – Glossary]

“For the purpose of UK Government software interoperability, data and document formats, the definition of open standards is

those standards which fulfil the following [5] criteria:

are maintained through a collaborative and transparent decision-making process that is independent of any individual supplier and that is accessible to all interested parties;

Via: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/internet/standards.html

Credit: Adam Cooper, CETIShttp://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/adam/2008/03/18/beyond-standards-part-1/

are adopted by a specification or standardisation organisation, or a forum or consortium with a feedback and ratification process to ensure quality;

Via http://wiki.powerdistributionresearch.com/index.php?title=IEEE/PES_Distribution_Automation_Tutorial_2007/2008

are published, thoroughly documented and publicly available at zero or low cost;

as a whole have been implemented and shared under different development approaches and on a number of platforms from more than one supplier, demonstrating interoperability and platform/vendor independence;

owners of patents essential to implementation have agreed to licence these on a royalty free and non-discriminatory basis for implementing the standard and using or interfacing with other implementations which have adopted that same standard. Alternatively, patents may be covered by a non-discriminatory promise of non-assertion. Licences, terms and conditions must be compatible with implementation of the standard in both proprietary and open source software. These rights should be irrevocable unless there is a breach of licence conditions.

Open but mandated…?!

</Open Standards>

Back to the Data…

Open Standards Consultation

http://consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards/

Standards Hub

http://standards.data.gov.uk/

@psychemedia

blog.ouseful.info