Aging Silos and Open Data

A new job often means big plans. So it is for the new Federal CTO, Aneesh Chopra. He's saying all the right things, but can he make all the right moves?

In his visit to Silicon Valley yesterday, Chopra called for the elimination of technology silos that litter the government landscape.

Good idea.

Focusing on IT, however, is less impactful than focusing on information. Tearing down data silos is more important -- for the public, the economy and improved government services.

The new federal IT dashboard showing tech spending by federal agencies is a nice start. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) moved in a similar direction when it required all federal agencies to use the same open, standardized formats for financial reporting so spending under the Recovery Act can be displayed on Recovery.gov. Shining a light on how government spends our money is helpful.

But more must be done. Windows of transparency are nice. Access to actual data is better.

Government needs to open source its information, research and investment. Perhaps our new federal CTO and CIO should commit to opening up access to a different set of government data every week. The public can help. Create an online forum where people can suggest (and vote for) what information they want made publicly available.

Call it democratizing data. Or open sourcing data. Either way, there is a powerful magnifier effect to increasing public access to government data that will drive innovation and real economic opportunity, not to mention government transparency.

That is creative silo destruction we can believe in.

Mr. Obama, tear down these silos!


Categories: government, OpenStandards, innovation

ISO Rejects OOXML - Now What?

After months of political maneuvering and manipulation, ISO has rejected OOXML for fast track approval as an international standard. Approval required a two-thirds majority, or 67% "yes" votes. OOXML received 53%, a few votes short.

Rejection of OOXML is a setback for Microsoft, which wanted ISO approval to help convince customers--especially governments--to accept its usage and speed adoption of Vista and Office 2007.

The loss is likely temporary, though it is difficult to say how temporary. In February, ISO will convene a special ballot resolution meeting to consider changes to OOXML addressing technical objections raised by countries. There are many. And most do not address to core issue -- the need for a truly open document standard (like ODF) without proprietary extensions (as currently fill OOXML).

The real battle continues in the marketplace and in government policy circles. However, Microsoft can do itself (and ISO) a big favor, and follow the advice of France...

Split OOXML into two standards -- one that can be merged into ODF as a real open standard; and one that catalogs all the proprietary extensions needed for backward compatibility with the legacy MS formats (a closed but useful standard).

In this case, splitting the baby will save it (and us).

Categories: ISO, OOXML, Microsoft

Microsoft: Mistakes Were Made in Sweden

Microsoft has admitted that a rogue employee sent a letter to MS partners in Sweden advising that they were expected to join the recent OOXML-as-ISO-standard meeting and vote "yes" in return for "market subsidies" (like paying for their advertising) and "additional support in the form of Microsoft resources." [Article is translated here.]

Microsoft has said that it was unauthorized, improper and quickly corrected. On his blog, Microsoft's Jason Matusow noted yesterday that "The whole point of the process is that organizations with an interest may participate."

He is right. Unfortunately.

In most countries, the technical committees considering how to vote on OOXML have created a process that invites (even relies on) companies -- all of whom have huge commercial interests in the decision -- to vote.

Such a process invites games, and abuses - as I noted here.

Why are governments enabling this? Why are governments abdicating their responsibility for decisions that affect public interests? Yes, technical issues are involved. But they are technical issues with big impact on public interests.

So blame the companies for their underhanded actions, and blame governments failing in their duty to serve the public interests.

[Quick Update: After revelations of improper actions by a Microsoft employee and concerns that it tainted voting on OOXML, the Swedish Standards Institute has declared its vote invalid and decided to abstain in the ISO vote.

Apparently, Sweden is not alone. Hungary's Minister of Economy & Transport instructed the Hungarian Standards Institution to re-do the OOXML voting due to ballot stuffing, arbitrary changing of rules, and exclusion of "no" voters.]

Categories: OpenStandards, OOXML, Sweden, Microsoft

Microsoft Stuffs OOXML Ballot Box in Sweden?

Sweden is the stage for the latest games being played as the ISO vote on OOXML approaches. Last minute arrivals (listed here) at the meeting of Sweden's technical committee tipped the vote in favor of OOXML.

Is this Microsoft's fault? The real problem is that countries like Sweden (and Portugal before this) never established clear, transparent rules on who and how votes take place.

And companies exploit this. Why? Because huge business interests are at stake, and they can. Microsoft gets its business partners to vote. Microsoft's competitors also show up to vote. They all pay their admission fee and vote.

This is what happens when a vote that should be based on technical and public interest grounds is left to companies to decide.

The basic question: why should companies vote at all on a country's position on a standard?

Whether one standard or another best serves the public interest of a country is not an issue that should be decided by companies, which all have huge market and business interests at stake. This is a decision for government -- weighed by technical experts and decided in a transparent process by politically accountable officials.

Anything less is unacceptable.

Categories: OpenStandards, OOXML, Sweden

India Rejects OOXML, for Now

Another big shoe has dropped on OOXML.

India will vote "No" at the upcoming ISO vote on whether or not OOXML should be a standard. For the moment, India is saying "not."


After six hours of debate, 19 of the 21 members of India's technical committee agreed to vote "No" with comments, meaning that should Microsoft later address technical concerns about OOXML, India might shift its position. That will be no easy task. There are some 200 technical issues that have been raised by various parties to the OOXML specification, which itself spans a few thousand pages.

Last week a similarly big blow struck OOXML when Brazil decided to vote "No". As one member of its technical committee indicated, Brazil is likely to use ODF as the basis for its national document standard.

Most countries have not yet indicated their position. However, with the US abstaining and China and Japan voting "No," it is difficult to see how OOXML will in reality become a global standard, regardless of the ISO vote results.

ODF and OOXML will likely coexist for a time, and some (like Gartner) argue that OOXML will be the de facto standard given Microsoft's market dominance. Yet, technology dominance is a hard to maintain forever, and the winds are shifting as governments look to ODF, not OOXML, as the foundation for their own national standards.

After all, silicon is not stone. There is always the hope that Microsoft will continue to evolve and find a way to provide backward compatibility with all its proprietary formats while still ensuring that an unencumbered document standard like ODF is the way forward.

Categories: OpenStandards, OOXML, India, Brazil

China: Patent Moves Meets Standards Muscle

China is moving up the intellectual property value chain and becoming a serious player in the IP world. In 2005, the number of Chinese patents jumped 33% over the prior year. It ranked 3rd behind the US and Japan, filing 170,000 patents. And that was 2 years ago.

China's influence over the future of technology is not limited to what is built, but also what is standardized. This only magnifies China's market impact.

China has not yet signaled how it will vote on fast track for the OOXML document standard at ISO. The US will not support fast track. While this is notable, China's vote will be the major indicator of OOXML's future. China has its own national standard for document formats - UOF. It has a stake in the standards fight different than the US, and leverage over the debate that the US lacks.

Critics argue that the volume of Chinese patents says nothing about the quality of those patents or the creativity of its technology. That may be true ... for now. But tens of thousands of engineers graduating every year combined with entrepreneurial drive and the growth of multinational research centers in China will change that, sooner rather than later.

As any foreign company in China will tell, their most talented Chinese staff are constantly leaving for new positions in other companies or their own start-up.

I have no idea how China will vote on the OOXML document standard. And I do not underestimate Microsoft's will to establish itself in China, as discussed here.

Still, I have my suspicions. OOXML does not support the use of Chinese characters within a Web address, and its use of Windows-specific specs for many functions -- for example, "useWord97LineBreakRules" or "autoSpaceLikeWord95" -- makes OOXML less appealing to a China intent on building its own patent portfolio and high tech industry.

[Image: "China Flag" by Dion Laurent]

Categories: China, openstandards, IP, OOXML

Open Standards and IP (Redux)

A simple question: should an "open standard" have any proprietary elements in it?

If this sounds like the start of an extremist, anti-business rant on standards (and vendors), let me re-phrase the question ...

Should development of a standard begin with the business considerations of a company or the technical need to ensure interoperability and unfettered use in any future products by any person or company?

I ask this question with no axe to grind. I work for no vendor. I have no equity stake in any standards or company promoting them.

If you think the idea of open standards being standards with no proprietary elements is heretical or simply some Platonic ideal divorced from reality, consider this ...

We are moving in that direction already, though slowly.

The fact that interoperability is becoming the touchstone for any standards discussion is a positive sign. Governments--the largest set of technology consumers--are starting to assert their interests (the public interest) in both interoperability and avoiding permanent lock-in any one technology or vendor.

Companies are beginning to loosen (though not legally liberate) standards from their intellectual property claims. That is another positive step. Latest news on that front: IBM's "patent pledge" to grant universal access to hundreds of patents related to web services and SOA.

IBM's decision is laudable, but not ideal. It sends an important message to the market: let innovation reign, and don't worry about us suing. It does not remove IBM's legal right to assert control. It just offers the world a partial, unilateral IP disarmament. That is a good thing, and more than most big IT companies have done.

When it comes to open standards, proprietary anything creates barriers. A pledge to not assert ownership to a standard removes one proprietary barrier (litigation). It does not remove all proprietary barriers.

Why should I have to talk about products to have a discussion of an open standard?

Why should I be forced to consider (or enter) a business relationship with any single company when I consider using an open standard?

Why should an open standard come with any strings (or chains) attached?

The answer is, it shouldn't.

Open standards should be agnostic to products and companies and business models and ... IP.

[Image: Pandora's Chains - CalTech]

Categories: interoperability, openstandards, IP

Open Standards Rise in Japan

Once again Japan stands out for technology leadership in Asia. Last week, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued its official Interoperability Framework.

It makes open standards -- including the OpenDocument Format (ODF)-- a required element of its procurement rules for technology and e-government.

The main objective of Japan's open standards requirement for procurement: interoperability (both data and process compatibility) and optimizing the value of ICT investments.

The Framework emphasizes a few specific policy points:

* the need to guarantee long-term access and retention of public documents.

* a prohibition on specifying individual products in procurement to avoid lock-in and dependency on non-interoperable products.

* when procuring software, open source software should be considered.

* decisions on software procurement should exclude software from considered based upon its development model or license.

* Preferred data formats are XML-based formats supported by multiple products/vendors with a low degree of dependence upon any single platform or specific technology.

And lastly, at the moment Japan's new Interoperability Framework recognizes only one acceptable document format: OpenDocument Format (ODF).

Categories: openstandards, ODF, Japan

What's the Matter With Standards in China?

When the question of standards is raised in China, officials and companies are quick to focus on one issue: intellectualy property rights.

A week of meetings in China--including discussions with officials from the State Council, the Beijing Municipality and national standards bodies--made clear that China's drive to develop its own technology standards (open and closed) is directly linked to its intent to avoid IPR owned by foreign companies. The issue is less about open verses closed, but standards with or without IPR.

China does not want its innovation, its industrial development beholden to others. And does not want to spend the next 20 years watching royalties and license fees flow overseas. Even pledges not to sue are unacceptable, which partly explains why China developed its own opendocument format instead of simply adopting ODF.

Hence, its move to open standards, and in particular standards without any IPR. China intends to level the playing field, at least within its borders, to the maximum extent possible. In fact, at least one official from a Chinese standards organization maintained that a standard is not "open" if it has any IPR in its specification.

China's influence over the direction and content of the standards debate will surely increase. And other governments will follow suit, insisting upon open standards unemcumbered by IPR. As these policies become reflected in procurement and the work of international standards bodies, it will drive changes in how companies develop and sell technology, at least those that want access to China's growing market.

Categories: openstandards, China

Is Oregon Wobbling on Open Standards?

Oregon has yet another new bill before its legislature about open standards in government. Unfortunately, this one equivocates on the choice of document standards and may produce more confusion than uniformity and interoperability among agencies.

House Bill 2920 "[r]equires state agencies to disclose public records in electronic form in certain circumstances and, when practicable, in open formats for which freeware is available."

Not the clearest language. "Requires" "in certain circumstances" "when practicable"? Now that's language only a lawyer could love.

More importantly, the bill defines an open standard as:

"Free of legal or technical restrictions on the specification's use for encoding, displaying, reading, printing or storing information or data in electronic form."

AND ...

"Developed or updated by more than one independent software provider in a well- defined, inclusive process."

Three questions come to mind:

1. What "freeware" will exist for OOXML's implementation?

2. What "technical restrictions" exist in OOXML? It certainly is loaded with legacy specs to ensure backward compatibility with MS products, and I suspect that creates many technical barriers for its use with products by other software providers.

3. Is OOXML truly "developed and updated" by more than one independent software provider? Its progress through the EMCL and ISO processes is about approval of the standard, not really its development. Or am I wrong about that?

The good news? The bill gives the Secretary of State the authority to fix its built-in equivocation. The Secretary can issue rules setting a
preference among open formats to "encourage uniformity among state agencies where different open formats exist that serve the same purpose, shall prefer the open format for which the widest selection of freeware is available for use by the
public."

Now who would win that competition?

A hearing on competing open standards bills is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 3rd at 1 p.m.

Categories: OpenStandards, Oregon

Democracy Meets Open Standards in Texas

Tomorrow, an unusual thing will happen. Open standards -- for most a very technical and opaque matter -- will be the subject of a political hearing in Texas. State lawmakers will debate adoption of a technology policy for Texas in which open standards will have a central role.

Public comments (by Texas residents or anyone else, non-residents, even non-Americans) may be sent online here.

It will be a chance for lawmakers to hear about the value and importance of open standards -- to drive innovation, to ensure future access to public records, for cost savings and public control over vital IT infrastructure.

The hearings will be publicly webcast live.

Here is the link for the House hearing at 10:30AM.

And here for the Senate hearing at 1:30PM.


Categories: OpenStandards, Texas

Is China Pulling a Bill Gates on ODF?

China is hot for open technologies, but on its own terms. So, does news that China has its own document format threaten prospects for the OpenDocument Format (ODF)?

The danger is a competing standard that might stall ODF's progress in Asia, but that risk seems low. Unlike Microsoft's OpenXML, China's UOF is not intended to compete with or stall ODF's acceptance.

Yes, China's Uniform Office Document Format (UOF) is the product of a broad public-private partnership among Chinese vendors, users and government-backed research institutes. Yes, key agencies--the Information Office of the State Council, Ministry of Information Industry, and Ministry of Science & Technology--support UOF.

However, China is not trying to kill or marginalize ODF. China is trying to solve a problem plaguing government procurement and its software industry -- the lack of compatability among Chinese office software is contributing to their unpopularity and difficulties in application integration.

The Chinese Working Group involved in UOF's development recommended an effort to harmonize UOF and ODF. OASIS will create a technical committee to collaborate with China on this. If China and OASIS are both serious about compatibility, this will be good news for ODF and China. UOF will be a truly open standard like ODF.

If they are successful, document formats will cease to be a barrier to innovation and interoperability. It will be a win-win situation that will increase choices for Chinese users, increase competition in office applications, strengthen the global competitiveness of Chinese IT companies, and drive open standards in a major IT market.