Bye bye...blog

It is my last post within DBE assignment. It was really interesting experience for me – as I expressed in one of my blog comments. At the very beginning I was very skeptical abut blogging. Just assignment that has to be done. Always I treated such activities like some kind of exhibitionism [or exscribitionism = exhibitionism + scribere: follow Erin Venema Swedish blogger]. Now, I much more open for this ideas and concepts. Blogging has given me also different perspective for my work and deeper distance for certain issues and aspects I work with every day.

My intention was to deal with possibilities of public administration enhancement through modern technologies. Key words of my post and short analyzes were: ICT, interoperability, open standards, corporate architecture, web services and service oriented architecture. There was one main thesis I presented in my blog - PA world and business world are very similar. Convergence of these two worlds is a every-day process.

I have no idea what will be result of my bloging. However, now I know much more about bloging and I am ready to discuss possibility of designing corporate blog in my organisation. Time will show if we decide to do that...

It was great experience to discuss some topics with ‘ fellow students”. Through blog, skype, email, in person. I learnt a lot from all blogs, especially from: Bogdan, Iza, Łukasz, Iza, Andrzej, Borys - http://borys-dbe.blogspot.com/

Now I can say follow song – Bye, bye ...blog, bye happiness – hello loneliness I think I’m gonna cry.. :)))

Good luck everyone who decide to continue blogging.
az

DeGIF

Next interesting example of interoperability policies in PA refers to Danish e-Government interoperability Framework. DeGIF is a set of guidelines and recommendations for Danish public institutions designing, developing and implementing ICT projects and systems.

Guidelines and recommendations included in DeGIF are based on the following assumptions:

• using open standards
  using existed standards
• stimulation of already agreed standards
• re-engineering of administration processes and procedures for effective exploitation available technologies and reorientation of public services into more client-oriented [citizens, business]
• using XML schemes agreed on state level
  

In general DeGIF propose the following groups of standards:

• Processes standards
• Technical standards
• Data standards

All included in DeGIF standards can be divided into 6 groups, as follows:

• recommended
• approved
• emerging
• de facto
• sustained
• migrate form

DeGIF is consisted with European Interoperability Framework [EIF].

More information can be found at:
http://standarder.oio.dk
http://standarder.oio.dk/Changelog.html
http://www.oio.dk/arkitektur/eng

Standards and Architectures for e-government Applications (SAGA)

As I mentioned several times national interoperability framework is important contribution towards modern and service-orientated administration.
Another example of such framework [British e-GIF has already been presented] is Standards and Architectures for e-government Applications (SAGA) – German set of standards.

SAGA is primarily designed for decision-makers in terms of ICT and eGovernment in German administrations. The document is a guideline that serves as an orientation aid when it comes to developing concepts for technical architectures and general technical concepts for individual IT applications.

Main goals of SAGA are:

1. To ensure ongoing flows of information between citizens, the federal government and its partners (interoperability)
2. To establish comparable procedures for the provision of services and for the defi-nition of data models; federal-state governments and communal administrations have the opportunity to make use of the development results of the BundOnline 2005 initiative (re-usability)
3. To provide specifications in the form of publicly accessible documentation (open-ness)
4. To consider developments on the market and in the field of standardisation (cost and risk reduction)
5. To ensure the applicability of solutions against the background of changing re-quirements in terms of volume and transaction frequencies (scalability).

The document defines three target groups for the federal administration's services:

• Government to Citizens (G2C): services which the federal government offers its citizens directly
• Government to Business (G2B): services which the federal government offers to companies
• Government to Government (G2G): federal government services for public agencies

Source: SAGA - Standards and Architectures for e-government Applications. Version 2.0

Standards presented in SAGA are:

• mandatory
• recommended
• under observation

Life cycle of SAGA standards is the following:

Source: SAGA - Standards and Architectures for e-government Applications. Version 2.0

More on SAGA can be found at:

http://www.kbst.bund.de/saga
http://www.e-government-handbuch.de
http://foren.kbst.bund.de/saga.

The World Wide Web Consortium

W3C was created in October, 1994. Its main goal was to maximize benefits of Internet through development of common protocols and intereoperability. W3C is consisted of 400 organizations from all over the world and enjoy worldwide respect for results of their works for Internet and interoperability development.

The most important norms, specifications and guidelines and developed by W3C are: Accessibility, Amaya, Annotea, CC/PP, CSS, CSS Validator, Device Independence, DOM, HTML, HTML Tidy, HTML Validator, HTTP, InkML, Internationalization, Jigsaw, Libwww, MathML, Multimodal Interaction, OWL, Patent Policy, PICS, PNG, Privacy and P3P, Quality Assurance [QA], RDF, Semantic Web, SMIL, SOAP/XMLP, Style, SVG, TAG, Timed Text, URI/URL, Validators, Voice, WAI, WebCGM, Web Services, Web Ontology, XForms, XHTML, XLink, XML, XML Base, XML Encryption, XML Key Management, XML Query, XML Schema, XML Signature, XPath, XPointer, XSL and XSLT.

W3C long-range intentions regarding Internet encompasses:

• Universal access: Internet should became available for all; through promotion technologies taking into consideration cultural, language and educational differences and hardware limitations
• Semantic web - It is indispensable to develop environment which allows every user to take advantage of Internet resources in as much as possible effective way
• Reliable Internet – Internet development process should realize and pay enough attention to its potential legal, economical and social impact on people life

More info - http://www.w3.org/

Standarization institutions

There are a few international institutions and initiatives aimed at promotion and adoption of respective norms and standards. Adoption of particular standard by standardization institution depends not only on quality of standard specification but also on organizational and promotional activities undertaken by organizations and institutions interested in normalization and standardization processes. There are some examples showing that some entities work on specifications that next evolve and became common norms [e.g. JAVA environment created mainly by Sun Microsystems] however majority of generic and basic norms has been created by international standardization institutions with participation of entities that decided to develop products and solutions sharing these norms and standards.

The following standardization institutions adopted standards connected with interoperability which can be used also in PA:

• World Wide Web Consortium [W3C - http://www.w3.org/]
• The Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF - http://www.ietf.org/]
• Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards [OASIS - http://www.oasis-open.org/]
• Web Services-Interoperability Organization [WS-I - http://www.ws-i.org/]
• Object Management Group [OMG - http://www.omg.org/]
• Open GIS Consortium [OGC - http://www.opengis.org/]
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative [http://dublincore.org/]

Another standarization institutions playing significant role in creation global environment for interoperability are: ANSI, DMTF, ECMA, ETSI, ICANN, IEC, IEEE, ISO, ITU, JXTA, LibertyAlliance, ODMG, OMA, OpenGroup, RosettaNet, RTCA, TCG oraz UDDI.org.

In next post I will present some info on W3C which seems to be most influential organization. The reason of presenting W3C is also that its web page was recommended to read within the assignment.

eGovernment Metadata Standard” [e-GMS]

e-GMS initiative is aimed at working on set of metadata and rules considering its creation that next may be used by civil servants for description of respective information data and resources of PA or in processes of creation of searching and browsing systems for PA. e-GMS is one of the tools that can be used for assuring semantic interoperability [the other are: technical and organizational] in PA. It is also an element of e-GIF architecture

More info:
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/metadata.asp
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/metadata_document.asp?docnum=806
http://www.esd.org.uk/standards/egms/

e-GIF

e-Government Interoperability Framework for GB [e-GIF] is a package of recommended and compulsory interoperability standards for PA in GB and methods of their application. E-GIF:

• Point out XML as a standard of data interchange
• Consider UML, RDF and XML as a main ways of data modeling and description
• Consider XSL to be a language describing way of data transformation
• Recognize XML scheme recommended by W3C as a language for scheme creation
• Recommend adoption only certified and verified standards that are widely known and used at the market [one way of killing risk and cutting costs in PA]
• Develop and adapt e-Government Metadata Standard based on Dublin Core [ISO 15836] model providing metadata tool kit for of description of documents of PA,
• Directly indicate necessity of adoption of web services, specifically SOAP, WSDI and UDDI specifications.
• Assure concrete implementation strategies of respective standards and solutions - UK GovTalk™

More info

GovTalk

Inspired by Luke’s comments and his question which indirectly refers to processes of normalization and standardization in ICT I would like to deal in my next few posts with this aspects. I will present some national and international initiatives in this regard.

At the beginning let me point out some British examples that seem to me be very influential and instructive. GovTalk is an initiative of GB government. Within this initiative group of experts are working on common standards in electronic communication, especially on XML schemes for information objects used for public e-services. GovTalk group is consisted of representatives of PA , National Health Service and business sector – ICT companies like BT, HP, IBM, EDS, Xansa, Fujitsu, Microsoft. GovTalk activities are described at http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/ where you can find also eGovernment Interoperability Framework [e-GIF] as well as XML schemes worked on by GovTalk experts.

Next post will present e-GIF

e-Strategy for Mazowsze

The Regional Assembly [Sejmik] has approved and adopted the Mazowieckie Voivodship’s e-strategy.

The e-strategy of the Mazowieckie Voivodship is a document which serves as a frame of reference for the most substantial innovative and ICT driven undertakings in the region. The realization of the e-strategy’s regulations will contribute to regional development through using ICT[ICT4D]. eGovernment is one of the area of interest.

The Mazovian strategy is the first document of this type in Poland, which will be in force in the forthcoming period of the EU structural funds programming. Simultaneously, it is the first country-scale strategy that is developed based on the European methodology of the information society’s development programming – the result of the IANIS programme.
The document set priorities, objectives, goals, main projects as well as budget and monitoring system. Budget of the strategy is more than 700 mln PLN.

The beneficiaries of the Strategy will be:

• Citizens
• Local and regional governments
• Academia
• NGO
• Biznes

What is interesting from my point of view that ICT is regarded in document no as a goal itself but as a tool for regional development [GDP growing], educational impulse and making people life better.