Ict Standards in Europe

Interoperability and open standards in Europe

Proposed actions during the Dutch presidency of the EU

Interoperability and open standards in Europe

Proposed actions during the Dutch presidency of the EU

CHANGE TITLE ON COVER PAGE, NOT HERE!

René van den Assem

24 August 2004

status / Draft
version / 1.0
quality control / Reinier Balt

Copyright © 2004 Verdonck, Klooster & Associates B.V.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Draft
Interoperability and open standards in Europe

Table of Contents

1Introduction

1.1Background

1.2Goal of this report

1.3Intended audience

2Problem Statement

2.1Generally recognized problem areas

3Approach

4Results of this study

5Interoperability and open standards: proposed actions

Verdonck, Klooster & Associates B.V.1

Draft
Interoperability and open standards in Europe

1Introduction

1.1Background

During the second half of 2004, the Netherlands is presiding the European Union. As part of the Dutch Presidency's work program, the Netherlands want to present an ICT action plan. Part of that plan will be actions on open ICT standards that address:

•The areas in which member countries are experiencing hinder because of the lack of ICT standards

•The areas in which member countries are experiencing hinder because of a lock-in caused by proprietary ICT 'standards'

•Joined actions that the Member States and European Commission can take to alleviate this hinder by creating open ICT standards in said areas

For this plan, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) wants to define this action plan using input and feedback from member countries and some future member countries on the subject of ICT Standards.

Open source and open standards are often used together, but they are two separate subjects with different opportunities and problems. This study focuses on open standards and will not address open source.

1.2Goal of this report

The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations has asked Verdonck, Klooster & Associates to gather input and feedback on ICT Standard from a selection of (future) member countries. This report outlines the current position of these countries on ICT standards and presents possible actions that the Dutch government can start during its presidency of the EU.

1.3Intended audience

This report was primarily written for The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The report is also intended for the persons that were interviewed.

2Problem Statement

Inter-organizational communication is vital in today’s networked information society. Not only in human-to-human communication, also in application-to-application communication. To make sure that communication can take place, all parties need to agree on the specifications that rule the exchange of information. There is a need for 'open', standards based solutions. Proprietary, non-open solutions, even if widely deployed, stand in the way of a free exchange of information to some degree, and should be avoided.

We need open standards. Unfortunately open standards cannot be achieved in all situations. This is mainly because of:

•a lack of standards

•the only available solutions are completely proprietary or are based on proprietary specifications

In the latter case this can potentially lead to a lock-in with the owner of the 'standard'. Recently Microsoft has shown this lock-in for its FAT standard that is used for storing files on your computer. The FAT standard has been used for numerous of other applications, for example memory cards used by digital cameras to store digital photographs. Recently Microsoft announced that they want to charge vendors of products that make use of the FAT standard. Suddenly these vendors are faced with extra costs for their product, which will probably find its way into the price the consumer has to pay.

The use of open standards will remove the threat of lock-in:

•all parties are able to use the standard freely and the conditions of use will not change;

•all parties can freely use the standard and implement it in their products.

When open standards are used for communication, every party can make this communication possible and thus achieve interoperability.

Another problem of proprietary 'standards' is that the owner of the standard is able to keep the competition from using the standard. In this way, open competition is barred and the choice for the customer is often severely limited. In the case of open standards there is no party that is able to prevent another party from using the standard. The use of open standards in this way lowers the barriers for competition.

Currently there are a lot of proprietary and half-open 'standards'. Some of the areas we've identified where this is the case, are: (multimedia) content, security solutions and (new) communication standards, like instant messaging and video conferencing. Because of this situation, organizations are not able to be fully interoperable and/or competition in the marketplace suffers.

In order to make interoperability possible in these areas, organizations will have to take action. Possible actions that an organization can take are:

•Do not use 'standards' that are not open

•Try to open up the proprietary 'standards'

•Create alternative open standards for the proprietary 'standard'

In this report we have identified areas in which there is a lack of openness, causing lack of interoperability and/or impeded competition. Furthermore, we have identified the actions that are most likely to improve these situations.

2.1Generally recognized problem areas

The researchers have – in the desk study phase of the research - identified two apparent cases for ICT standards. These cases have been presented to the interviewed member states as a starting point for discussion.

•Pan-European open standard for identities of citizens and organizations.
A standard to make transparent communication between government and citizens/organizations possible. Th This issue is identified in the European Interoperability Framework, part of the IDA programme, as an essential condition that must be met to make pan-European e-government services possible. E.g. sharing information between governments about citizens/organizations needs a method of uniquely identifying the citizen/organization. This case is important, but at the same time very complex, for example, in Germany law forbids a nation wide identity for citizens.

•Open document format. Currently there are but two de facto 'standards' for exchanging documents:

-The document standard of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.)

-The document standard of Adobe (PDF)

Both are proprietary 'standards'. Although other word processors offer some support for these 'standards', true interoperability between word processors can never be achieved. Every new version of Microsoft Office for example has updated the document standard. The specifications of this document standard is not published so other competing word processors cannot read (and write) documents that follow the new document standard. The same holds for the PDF standard.

Lately Microsoft moved towards XML for their document file format. XML is an open standard maintained by the W3C. Microsoft has made some extensions to their format (vector markup language) in such way that the resulting document standard cannot be seen as an open standard, i.e. you need the specifications of Microsoft to be able to read and write documents in that format. Microsoft is offering this specification, but under such restrictions that you cannot speak of open standards. Furthermore, Microsoft has applied for patents on their XML format for documents in the EU. This might increase the dependency on Microsoft products even more.

To promote interoperability for documents, action is undertaken in the IDA programme. This has recently resulted in a recommendation by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the IDA programme, aiming for interoperability between the different formats in the market and encouraging market players to work in this direction.

Besides these two important cases, there are more options that we see. For this, we will look at the standards landscape from two views:

•Horizontal standards that may be used by all organizations regardless of their policy area

•Vertical standards that are focused on a policy area (health, finance, justice, etc.)

IDA and eEurope are actively working on vertical standards. From their action plan their focus is on eBusiness, education (eLearning), eGovernment and health (eHealth). Since IDA and eEurope are actively working on these subjects, the apparent problems are being worked on. This study will not focus on vertical standards, but on horizontal standards.

When looking at horizontal standards, we see three main areas of standards where the lack of open standards is hindering exchange of information:

•Standards for content like audio, video, documents, etc.

•Standards for communication. Mainly new forms of communication like video conferencing and instant messaging

•Standards for security

Access to content

In an information society, information must be exchanged without any hinder. Unfortunately, to access the information we mostly need to use proprietary standards. This means that we cannot guarantee that every member of the society will always be able to use the information.

There are four apparent areas where proprietary standards are hindering access to information:

•Document standards. See above for open document standards.

•Standards for audio and video. There is a huge market for digital audio and video. The standards that are used to serve the audio and video to the consumer are mostly proprietary. The vendors of implementations of the standards do not support al technical platforms. Since the standard is not open, no other party is able to implement the standard on these unsupported platforms. This makes the content unavailable to those who are limited to the use of unsupported platforms.

•Geographical standards. There is increasing need for exchanging maps and other geographical (spatial) data between organizations. For example, telecom operators need access to maps of cities to plan their deployment of cables. A lot of effort is currently put in the creation of open standards, but we’re not there yet. The applications in which we draw maps are mostly using proprietary standards (for example Autocad).

•Digital Rights Management. Broadband networks for consumers have made it possible that digital audio and video is easily exchanged. Most authors of audio and video want some sort of payment for this content to which they hold the rights. There is currently no infrastructure to support and control this. A lot of initiatives try to setup this infrastructure, called digital rights management. Currently, software vendors and the amusement industry (record labels and motion picture associations) run these initiatives. The resulting standards are proprietary that will hinder the exchange of DRM content in the long run.

•Information in ERP systems. Within Europe, the member states need to supply financial information to the EU. Each member state puts a lot of effort into gathering the data and transforming it into information that is sent to the EU. Some members have around 250 people allocated just for this task. When all parties are using the same standard (like XBRL) for exchanging financial data within and between member countries and the EU, this process can be made much more efficient.

Communication standards

The basic communication standards used for communication over Internet are mostly open standards, maintained by the IETF. New communication applications like Instant Messaging and Video Conferencing are using proprietary protocols. In this area interoperability is not present although end-users want (need?) this interoperability. Mostly because of competitive reasons, vendors are not moving towards open standards.

Security

There are lots of initiatives in security. One of interest is a standard for a person’s public identity. Such an identity is necessary to identify a person in processes that span multiple organizations and multiple countries. This is relevant for eGovernement, eHealth, eProcurement, eLearning, etc.

There are several organizations within member countries and on EU-level working on this subject. The problems we see is that these initiatives are not coordinated. A standard for public identity of a person will only work if there is only one accepted standard that is used by al parties.

3Approach

A phased approach was taken to gather the position of (future) member countries on ICT standards:

•Preparations. In this phase, we have

-Pinpointed the specific contacts within the (future) member states

-Prepared a position statement and a questionnaire

•Information gathering. In this phase the contact have been interviewed, in person or by email and/or phone. A list of contacts can be found below

•Reporting. In this concluding phase, the end report has been written.

Participation was partly through interviews, partly through e-mail. The following countries have participated:

-Belgium

-Denmark

-France

-Germany

-Greece

-Italy

-Poland

-United Kingdom

Also, we’ve had contacts with relevant representatives of the EC and CEN/ISSS, one of the European Standardization Organizations.

In the contacts we established, the scope of our research was automatically limited to mainly to the e-government angle, although the original approach was significantly broader. Originally we attempted to approach the issue of ICT standardization from several angles:

-The e-government angle. The government standardizing the communication with and within the many parts of the government.

-The information society angle. The role of ICT standardization in information interoperability in many sectors (both public and private). The role of European ICT industry in establishing ICT standards.

-The government procurement angle. In government procurement, references to ICT standards should be beneficial to suppliers as well as (government) users of ICT.

Due to this contact pattern, we will, in the remainder of this report, focus mainly on the relationship e-government and ICT standardization.

4Results of this study

Based on interviews, e-mail and phone conversations, we come to the following conclusions.

1. The nature and scope of ICT standardization in Europe

Europe doesn’t have a good track record in developing ICT core technology. Most of the productized software that lies at the heart of our information systems, is developed in the USA. Furthermore, new basic technologies are often researched in Europe, only to be successfully productized elsewhere. (Note that this weakness doesn’t appear to be linked to a lack of technical prowess: the strong position in embedded systems is proof of that.)

The ICT standardization in Europe reflects this situation: it deals with applying existing technology to meet the specific requirements of European users. Only in a limited number of cases, ICT standardization in Europe deals with specifying basic technology and is in a sense global leader, the notable cases being GSM and smart cards.

2. ICT standards, relevance to governments

Standardization is considered relevant, but require different government attention in different cases. Listed in order of decreasing government attention are the following cases:

•Standards to fulfill legal requirements, e.g. standards created in response to a Directive.

•Standards to fulfill important policy goals, not necessarily bound to a legal requirement. These goals can be in the public sector but are not limited to that. Consider cases such the eEurope action plan and payment systems.

•Standards that governments have a predominant stake in as a user. Areas could include issues directly dealing with the public tasks of a government, e.g. public identity as well as other e-government topics.
In this area, equal access to government services, is an important issue. As services become electronic, governments should not be forcing specific solutions on users.

•Standards that are important for the government as a user, but to the business sector as well.

•Standards with no special interest by governments. Business developments are exclusively driving the standardization, the government has only a general economic interest.

3. What makes an ‘open’ standard?

What makes a standard ‘standard’ or ‘open’?

Definitions used by the open standards open source software (OSOSS) programme in the Netherlands, which are used as working definition in European context as well, are:

An ICT standard is a collection of (technical) agreements, established by authority, that sufficiently describe the way a system works or the way a system works together with other systems.

An open standard is a standard that meets the following criteria:

•the costs for the use of the standard are low and are not an obstacle to access to it;

•the standard has been published;

•the standard is adopted on the basis of an open decision-making procedure (consensus or majority decision etc);

•the intellectual property rights to the standard are vested in a not-for-profit organisation, which operates a completely free access policy;

•there are no constraints on the re-use of the standard

We observed that interesting work has been done on alternative definitions of open standards, notably by the Danish government. There is clearly a need to have a common European definition, the open standards issue is already much confused with the open source issue and can't suffer much additional confusion.

4. Relevance of open ICT standards

Open standards have several advantages. Literature mentions:

•Better interoperability within government and between government, citizens and businesses.

•Lower dependence on any one vendor and capability to switch vendors.

•Lower costs and lower chances for vendor abuse of monopolies, by keeping market segments competitive.

•Increased quality and durability

•Better support and communication because of availability of the knowledge.

The respondents in this study considered the following reasons to use open standards to be the most important: