Paul Jacobson

The Department of Public Service and Administration has set out the requirements for what it considers to be an open standard for implementation in government departments. The document it published is called the Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) and it sets out a series of standards which government departments are required to adhere to:

Improved public service delivery tailored to citizen and business needs, as envisioned in the e-Government Strategic Framework: Accelerating Service Delivery 2014, published in 2007, requires the seamless flow of information across all tiers of Government. The Minimum Information Interoperability Standards (MIOS) sets out the Government’s technical principles and standards for achieving interoperability and information systems coherence across the public sector. The MIOS defines the essential pre-requisite for joined-up and web enabled Government. Next to security, it is an essential component in the overall e-Government strategy.

Adherence to the MIOS standards and policies is mandatory as set out in the proposed chapter five of the Public Service Regulations. They set the underlying infrastructure, freeing up public sector organizations so they can concentrate on serving the customer through building value added information and services. It is the responsibility of individual departments to improve their business processes so that they are more effective, and to take advantage of the opportunities provided by increased interoperability.

The main thrust of the framework (in line with international best practice), is the adoption of a structured approach with regard to information systems. To achieve this approach, and to ensure the enhancement of interoperability across Government, a minimum set of standards are included in this document as a required Government-wide standard. To this end, this updated version of MIOS contains an explicit definition of Open Standards as well as the inclusion of the ISO (International Standards Organisation) Open Document Format.

The objective of achieving interoperability must be managed as a long-term ongoing initiative. In this regard the Government Information Technology Officers Council, (GITOC) which consists of representatives from all Government Departments including provincial and local Government, are crucial and instrumental in carrying this objective forwards and through to implementation.

It is also essential to ensure that MIOS remains up to date and aligned to stakeholder requirements, so that it can embrace the potential of new technology as well as market developments. In this instance, collaboration becomes a critical success factor for the formulation of strategic synergies.

What this all comes down to is that the government is phasing in technologies that support open standards which is, in turn, the cornerstone of this policy framework:

2.3 Open Standards

2.3.1 There are number of definitions of open standards which emphasise different aspects of openness, including of the resulting specification, the openness of the drafting process, and the ownership of rights in the standard. The list below contains frequently cited indicators of the openness of a standard. For the purposes of the MIOS, a standard shall be considered open if it meets all of these criteria. There are standards which we are obliged to adopt for pragmatic reasons which do not necessarily fully conform to being open in all respects. In such cases, where an open standard does not yet exist, the degree of openness will be taken into account when selecting an appropriate standard:

• it should be maintained by a non-commercial organization
• participation in the ongoing development work is based on decision-making processes that are open to all interested parties.
• open access: all may access committee documents, drafts and completed standards free of cost or for a negligible fee.
• It must be possible for everyone to copy, distribute and use the standard free of cost.
• The intellectual rights required to implement the standard (e.g. essential patent claims) are irrevocably available, without any royalties attached.
• There are no reservations regarding reuse of the standard.
• There are multiple implementations of the standard

While this document may not explicitly say so, it pretty much excludes Microsoft’s Office Open XML as a candidate for acceptance in terms of this framework barring some fundamental changes to the OOXML specification and how it is maintained and developed. This decision is fantastic news for open access advocates and even better news for South Africans who don’t have access to expensive, proprietary software.

For more on this, take a look at this article on Tectonic.

Technorati Tags:
open access, open standards, mios, government, policy, odf, open document format

I have been speaking at conferences and seminars more and more lately and I like to think my presentations are improving each time. It is important to me to prepare a presentation slideshow that is appealing, interesting and doesn’t bore my audience into a mild coma so I am always looking for new ideas and imagery to use to make my subject matter that much more interesting.

I was chatting to my brother yesterday and he put me on to this post on Dave Duarte’s blog about a presentation intended to help people present better. Ok that was a bit of a mouth-full but take a look at this presentation and you will see what I mean:

| View | Upload your own

(By the way, this presentation, “Death by PowerPoint” has been published under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 2.5 license and is by Alexei Kapterev)

Of course one of the gurus of presentations is Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen. He takes a look at a number of famous speakers, their styles and guides you through what makes them effective (and sometimes not so effective).

As for me, I am hardly a pro at this but I haven’t put anyone to sleep yet. On this note, you may have noticed a banner in this blog’s sidebar about the New Media and Technology Law @ Work seminar/workshop on Tuesday, 30 October 2007 in Sandton, Johannesburg. For more information click on the button below and be sure to send us your registration form by the end of the week if possible. We need to give the venue people numbers for catering.

Technorati Tags:
presentations, slideshow, death by powerpoint, dave duarte

I gave a presentation at a Marcus Evans sponsored event called “Corporate IT Security” in Rosebank this afternoon. I spoke about new media and some of the social media and legal issues companies should bear in mind when implementing new media initiatives.

I was only at the event for the afternoon of the last day and I was told that social media was a pretty hot topic in between the pretty technical security orientated presentations. I enjoyed the presentation and had some good feedback from an audience which included delegates from other African countries. I converted my slideshow into a video if you would like to get an idea of the topics I covered:

The music is a track called “Time (Instrumental)” by Ben Riordan and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution license 2.5 from ccMixter.

This slideshow is also a nice preview of what I will be talking about at our upcoming New Media and Technology Law @ Work workshop on 30 October so if this appeals to you, why not book your place at the workshop.

Technorati Tags:
new media, corporate it security, marcus evans, presentation, social media, slides, video, technology

A colleague of mine, Daniella Kafouris, and I are going to be running a short workshop on new media and technology law issues which will be of interest to anyone who is looking at implementing new media technologies in a business environment and just about anyone who is making use of IT in the workplace.

The Web and information technology are important components of an increasing number of businesses’ operational and marketing initiatives. It therefore becomes important that businesses are aware of the some of the issues that could arise through their use of the Web and information technology generally, as those issues pertain to them. Our aim is to introduce you to many of these issues through these workshops and perhaps give you a few ideas about how to approach these issues in a constructive and more effective manner.

A few people have expressed concern that the workshop will be in legalese. Please rest assured that Daniella and I have been training hard and can speak pretty good non-legalese English and will be presenting the workshop in English (there is a risk that we may have a faint legalese accent though).

Topics we intend to cover will include:

• The risk of defamation through the use of social media;
• An overview of intellectual property rights issues on the Web;
• Open content licensing options;
• Protecting your relationships with your customers;
• Technology risks in the workplace;
• Corporate governance as it related to technology risks;
• Information and network security concerns;
• Risk assessments to detemine your possible exposure.

Our first workshop will take place on 30 October 2007 at the FNB Conference Centre on Grayston Drive in Sandton. We are holding a couple seats open for the media so if you are a journalist, citizen journalist/blogger or otherwise write for a related publication, please send us (either Paul or Daniella) an email with your details?

We only have space for 35 delegates so space is limited so please send us (either Paul or Daniella) an email with your name and email address to book a seat. We will get back to you with a booking form. You can find out more at our wiki and also on Facebook (where you can also RSVP directly).

Technorati Tags:
new media, new media law, new media law and policy, technology, security, workshop, sandton

I have started to see reports that Microsoft’s Office Open XML document format was not adopted as a standard by ISO. Microsoft failed to garner sufficient support to have its controversial document format adopted as a standard alongside the OpenDocument Format which is now the only standard of its kind. This must come as quite a blow to Microsoft which has lobbied pretty hard to have its format ratified as an ISO standard. On the other hand this is a victory for open source and open standards pundits who have maintained that there is no need for another document standard.

MacWorld has reported that some countries would like to see Office Open XML split up into two parts with the core component integrated into the OpenDocument Format development work. Aside from Microsoft wanting a Microsoft logo on anything to do with office software, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a combined approach to a single, open source and open standard document format. Users would then be able to choose between Microsoft’s arguably superior and costly Office suite and free office suites such as OpenOffice and NeoOffice which will satisfy the majority of users’ needs. Users would also have more freedom to choose their operating system of choice, whether that be Windows, Mac OS or Linux because they would not be tied to a single manufacturer’s software.

This is not the end of the road for Office Open XML. Microsoft did receive 74% of the vote (it needed 75% of the vote to win fast track approval). The votes against the format included comments which Microsoft will have an opportunity address before a final vote in March 2008 when the format will have another bite at the cherry. We could still see Office Open XML ratified as a standard next year but for the time being, OpenDocument Format is the standard.

I don’t know how SA Standards voted. Hopefully South Africa voted against Office Open XML in this round. Either way, I am sure there will be a further opportunity to vote again in March.

Update:
Andrew Rens has just posted a link to the official ISO announcement on his blog. The announcement includes the following statements:

Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes cast negative. Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53 % of votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being positive and 26 % of national votes cast being negative.

Comments that accompanied the votes will be discussed at a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) to be organized by the relevant subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages) in February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The objective of the meeting will be to review and seek consensus on possible modifications to the document in light of the comments received along with the votes. If the proposed modifications are such that national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative votes, and the above acceptance criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to publication.

Otherwise, the proposal will have failed and this fast-track procedure will be terminated. This would not preclude subsequent re-submission under the normal ISO/IEC standards development rules.

Technorati Tags:
document, microsoft, office open xml, ooxml, open xml, opendocument format, standards, document format

I have just tried to look up an IT and telecoms focused law firm operating in Johannesburg and they don’t have a Web presence. How can any law firm, especially a law firm specialising in IT and telecommunications not have a Web site?

Technorati Tags:
it and telecommunications, no web site, law firm

I read an interesting post on GigaOm about Google search versus open source (or crowd sourced) search in the form of Jimmy Wales’ Search Wikia and I started to think some more about Google’s growing dominance over so many aspects of our online lives. The post basically talks about how Search Wikia could be to Google what Linux has become (and is becoming) to Microsoft. The question being asked is whether an open source competitor to Google can make serious inroads into Google’s market and it may come down to a slow process of attrition over time. Of course Search Wikia isn’t the only initiative of this sort. Jason Calacanis has launched a human powered search engine called Mahalo which is billed as the “world’s first human-powered search engine”. Both Search Wikia and Mahalo represent a shift away from the automated processes used by Google and similar search engines and perhaps also a trend towards a more personal approach to search on the Web.

What I am getting to, after a fashion, is that these human powered alternatives to Google seem to underscore this sense that Google is becoming an overwhelmingly dominant force in our lives, so much so that just about everything many people do on the Web is touched by some aspect of Google. Our email is run by Gmail (which is monitored enough to enable Google to present contextual ads), our schedules by Google Calendar, our basic documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs, our search preferences (and a complex matrix of our tastes and consumption habits) by Google search and more. A large percentage of traffic on the Web is facilitated or observed by Google. One question is how concerned you ought to be that so much of your life is being observed by such a powerful and virtually omniscient organisation on the Web. Well, for starters, you should take a look at Google’s privacy policy (the full version is here) and decide for yourself whether you are happy with how Google treats your personal information. The following paragraph in the full policy is an interesting example of things you should be aware of:

Information you provide – When you sign up for a Google Account or other Google service or promotion that requires registration, we ask you for personal information (such as your name, email address and an account password). For certain services, such as our advertising programs, we also request credit card or other payment account information which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.

The one challenge with Google is that because of its pervasive presence, it is possible for Google to compile a pretty comprehensive profile of its users based on their use of its various services. This isn’t really a new thing and privacy advocates have been warning about this sort of thing for ages. How much information about yourself do you want to give away? Do we ultimately want completely invasive and personalised services where our personal preferences and tastes are virtually public knowledge in the interests of providing a better service or more appropriate product? Maybe we do. What we should all be doing is paying more attention to who can use what and where. Google is in the process of standardising its Universal Search service that combines all its search engines into one big one. This is made possible through its various facets and it also makes the sort of profiling I mentioned above possible.

On the other hand, distributed services (perhaps Search Wikia or Mahalo for search, Flickr for photos, your own mail server for mail and Amazon for your shopping needs) are arguably less likely to share all your information and facilitate accurate and personal profiling so if you are concerned about Big Brother Google, then you need to think carefully about what you use for what and when on the Web. Privacy is about taking responsibility for knowing how much privacy we retain and what we give away.

Technorati Tags:
google, privacy, universal search, mahalo, search wikia, open source