A few days ago, I wrote a blog entry stating that we need a new international standardization body. In this post, I would like to share some of my ideas regarding how to include more people, the general public, in international standardization efforts. I really hope to have your contributions here (post a comment), because I think that we need to discuss and present a solid proposal to the international community so please join me in that effort. Here your ideas are totally welcome.
The first thing that I would like to say is that I believe that we have good people and bad people on the world, so this is the most basic foundation that I’m assuming (I don’t care if they live on developed or underdeveloped countries, or if they work at Company A, B or C). With that clarified, everything that I’ll write here assumes participation and contribution in good faith.Standards development work isn’t necessarily a very cool thing to do, mainly because it demands a high level of knowledge on the subject being worked on and a hefty measure of available time for it. This is why I think that the development itself is something that needs to be done by a specialized group with very high technical skills, but I think that it is a good idea to have an way to allow ordinary people to follow the process and provide input (similar to the open mail list on OASIS ODF TC, the Technical Committee that develops the ODF Standard). I really believe that transparency is a very good and effective remedy to human stupidity, and transparency on technical discussions will for sure keep the stupid ideas (and folks) away from that group (unfortunately transparency wasn’t the norm with OOXML… the folks that were at the BRM or who joined their NB meetings to discuss the matter will understand exactly what I’m talking about 
).
So, with that well understood, I really believe that the public’s participation is very healthy and welcome in two phases of the standardization process:
1. Requirements phase
2. Final approval phase (or Requirements cross-checking).
On the Requirements phase, I think that we should have a two-level requirements gathering (based on WEB 2.0 technologies as Wiki), technical requirements and use cases:
1. Requirements Phase:
1.1 Technical Requirements:
These are a set of technical requirements that can be developed by technical personnel, application developers that use the standard, or academic people.
Those type of requirements are very specific ones, something like “the parameter X would support an additional Y value to allow this or that usage”.
It would be a good idea to follow a basic form for that kind of proposal, and I think that we have a good model on OASIS ODF TC, developed after years of experience on collaborative development (sample can be found here).
1.2 Use Cases:
Most standards users don’t have high-level technical skills, but they definitely know how they want to use a particular standard (or standards-based technology). It is also common to see that standards specialists usually just have good expertise in a particular field of application for that standard, and this is why a good source of use cases is very important to standards developers.
It can also happen that a very small technical change to a standard allows a very advanced use case to take place (and it is common to see that both players, users and developers, usually don’t easily see that so clearly).
I consider that this is a very good opportunity to reduce the distance between the standards developers and users and to provide some real-world usage context, which can help the standards developers to make development decisions based on real-world demands.
I also think that a shared “use case database” (or something like that) is a very good way to unite users’ experiences and demands, and to build a common set of good ideas to solve common problems. I believe that this last benefit would be very well explored by governmental users, as well as product developers and services providers.
2. The Final Approval Phase
This is to me, the opportunity to do a very simple thing: The person that has contributed a requirement (technical or use case) will simply check if his contribution was analyzed and implemented in the new version of the standard.
I think that it is very hard for a single person or even a small group to do that (based on all requirements and all final standard documents), but if each contributor checks its own contribution’s progress, we should have an excellent final product; more than that, if one contributor checks - just for curiosity - the treatment given to other contributions , we’ll have an excellent peer review.
Of course a good tracking tool will be necessary to facilitate this work, but I think that we have enough technology today to do such a thing, and the final result will be very valuable to everyone.
So, these are the first ideas that I would like to share with you, and I would really appreciate it if you would send me your thoughts by posting comments. I sincerely believe that with a small contribution by each of us, we’ll be able to design a new process for standards development that will allow anyone to participate without needing to be a representative of Company Y, or to have a certain degree, and so on. At the end of the day, standards developers or not, we’re all standards users.
As I said, I really believe that good people can build a better world… Join us 
September 10th, 2008 - 2:12 pm
Se http://digistan.org.
Critics of Digistan says there is already IETF.
Supporters of Digistan says IETF is only for Internet.
September 10th, 2008 - 3:44 pm
Zoobab:
I know Digistan, but what I’m proposing here is an umbrella-like process (not an entity).
I believe that Digistan, IETF, OASIS and W3C (among other) has a very important place and rule on the process, but without a well organized public participation, and a high level harmonized process, we all may be riding (or being ride) to a crossroad where JTC1 is right now. This is what we need to avoid.
Best,
Jomar
September 10th, 2008 - 3:51 pm
I have long thought that this is something that the FSF could look into taking up.
The idea would be to form the Free Standards Foundation to complement the Free Software Foundation. There could be a license similar to the GPL, for standards. For example, the license could offer patent protections similar to the GPL 3, and it could ensure that all derivative standards were offered under the same GPSL (General Public Standards Licence).
September 10th, 2008 - 7:26 pm
@alsaman:
Someone brought this up in GNU India mailing lists. RMS replied and he said resources would be needed and gave it a pass.
September 11th, 2008 - 12:52 am
take a look at wiki.ihe.net
not perfect, but there is a serious effort to do the kinds of things you are talking about.
September 11th, 2008 - 11:44 am
Very good ideas. You missed but two elements (that an org like Digistan has already integrated):
- avoidance of vendor capture
- breaking existing or potential barriers to implementation/participation/use/modification.
September 11th, 2008 - 12:37 pm
Charles:
I don’t want to replace Digistan, but complement what Digistan is doing (or plans to do).
Imagine the entity that I’m proposing as an Consortium, an Open Standards Consortium if you like, that will aggregate and harmonize the work already done by entities like Digistan, W3C, OASIS and IETF (among others). If you take a good look on those 4 entities (just as a sample set), you’ll see that they are very well specialized on some particular areas, their work is complementary and they used to have similar issues and challenges.
I’m proposing something that I think that will help them to solve those issues and challenges. I think that we need a big umbrella over all those folks (and a very good consensus definition about what Open Standard means).
I wrote a comment on the Spanish version of this post, explaining more or less the same things that I just wrote on here, but there is an additional information.
ISO is currently an one-stop-shop for international standards and governments really enjoy that. I believe that it is very easy to us think that governments may also manage several relationships with other standards groups individually (as OASIS, W3C, IETF, etc…) but it isn’t that easy. I think that this multi-part relationship may increase the fragmentation of national level interoperability initiatives, and this will divide our folks and efforts, not unite them. We need to have an one-stop-shop of Open Standards (there is a room for that).
I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. I simply want to put four (or more) wheels together to increase our chances to move fasten
(and of course, to a better place than we are).
Everyone:
I’m really enjoying this discussion… let us expand it
September 11th, 2008 - 4:37 pm
[…] not only India and ANSI that are open to public feedback at the moment. A constructive discussion is taking place in Jomar’s blog (Brazil). There’s intention to obviate reliance on ISO. So, these are the first ideas that I would […]
September 17th, 2008 - 8:03 am
“As I said, I really believe that good people can build a better world… Join us :)”
Speaking about good people, and OTOH India, BK is now a huge monstrous problem. It is troubling everybody, not only ordinary people like me and you.
Mainly, it is creating poverty rather than prosperity which is the correct function of BK.
Who shot which rays I don’t know, but the Gods/MoTU seem to be egoistically stuck with using BK as instrument to destroy small village folk. BK did not even spare simple animals like dogs and rats. Even governments would agree that the whole mechanism of BK must be dismantled.
Before you jump, BK means Bihar Kosi river, lest you misunderstand.
BK people apparently survived on tobacco, before this accident. But tobacco/smoking issues are not allowed here, even for discussion. This is a highly technical forum. So I will just urge everyone to do their little bit to help small folk and animals who out of fear of the furies of BK, are *permanently* settled away from BK and tributaries.
Anyone who really wants to _help_, kindly DONATE to “belurmath” which is a good NGO.
I think they also support donation via email, will have to just check.
Sorry for digression on higghly technical forum.
Thank you for your time.
PS: The sheer twisted nature of BK issue is forcing me to mix topics here. Not a regular thing to do. I hope this does not count as a criminal activity in Land of Laws.
October 8th, 2008 - 12:37 am
Hi!
I would like extend my SQL capabilities.
I red that many SQL resources and would like to
read more about SQL for my position as db2 database manager.
What can you recommend?
Thanks,
Werutz
October 16th, 2008 - 4:52 am
Реально классное место, мне тут понравилось, правда…
Столько всего суперского и интересного, я тут останусь на долго.
November 2nd, 2008 - 1:53 am
Test message
Sorry me noob…
November 12th, 2008 - 6:05 pm
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