Adam Cooper’s Work Blog

The ease with which data can be transferred without loss of meaning from a store to an analytical tool - whether this tool is in the hands of a data scientist, a learning science researcher, a teacher, or a learner – and the ability of these users to select and apply a range of tools to data in formal and informal learning platforms are important factors in making learning analytics and educational data mining efficient and effective processes.

I have recently written a report that describes, in summary form, the findings of a survey into: a) the current state of awareness of, and research or development into, this problem of seamless data exchange between multiple software systems, and b) standards and pre-standardisation work that are candidates for use or experimentation. The coverage is, intentionally, fairly superficial but there are abundant references.

The paper is available in three formats: Open Office, PDF, MS Word. If printing, note that the layout is "letter" rather than A4.

Comments are very welcome since I intend to release an improved version in due course.

analytics, standards

Early last week the government announced the Open Standards Board had finally been convened via a press release from Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and via a blog post from Liam Maxwell, the government's Chief Technology Officer. This is a welcome development but what chuffed me most was that my application to be a Board member had been successful.

I say "finally" because it has taken quite a while for the process to move from a shadow board and a consultation on policy (Cetis provided feedback), through an extension of the consultation to allay fears of bias in a stakeholder event, analysis of the comments, publication of the final policy, and deciding on the role of the Open Standards Board. The time taken has been a little frustrating but I take comfort from my conclusion that these delays are signs of a serious approach, that this is not an empty gesture.

Before going on, I should publicly recognise the contribution of others that enabled me to make a successful application. Firstly: Jisc has provided the funding for Cetis and a series of supporters(*) for the idea of open standards in Jisc has kept the flame alive. Many years ago they had the vision and stuck with it in spite of wider scepticism, progress that has been often slow, a number of flawed standards (mistakes do happen), and the difficulty in assessing return on investment for activities that are essentially systemic in their effect. Secondly: my colleagues in Cetis from whom I have harvested wisdom and ideas and with whom I have shared revealing (and sometimes exhausting) debate. Looking back at what we did in the early 2000's, I think we were quite naive but so was everyone else. I believe we now have much more sophisticated ideas about the process of standards-development and adoption, and of the kinds of interventions that work. I hope that is why I was successful in my application.

The Open Standards Board is concerned with open standards for government IT and is closely linked with actions dealing with Open Source Software and Open Data. All three of these are close to our hearts in Cetis and we hope both to contribute to their development (in government and the wider public sector) as well as helping there to be a bit more spill-over into the education system.

The public face of Cabinet Office open standards activity is the Standards Hub, which gives anyone the chance to nominate candidates to be addressed using open standards and to comment on the nominations of others. I believe this is the starting point for the business of the Board. The suggestions are bit of a mixed bag and the process is in need of more suggestions so - to quote the Hub website - if you know of an open standard that could be "applied consistently across the UK government to make our services better for users and to keep our costs down", you know what to do!

The Open Standards Board has an interesting mix of members and I'm full of enthusiasm for what promises to be an exciting first meeting in early May.

----

* - there are too many to mention but the people Cetis had most contact with include Tish Roberts, Sarah Porter and Rachel Bruce.

standards

Yesterday I attended day 1 of a conference entitled "Public Sector: Open Source" and, while Open Source Software (OSS) was the primary subject, Open Standards were very much on the agenda. I went in particular because of an interest in what the UK Government Cabinet Office is doing in this area.

I have previously been quite positive about both the information principles and the open standards consultation (blog posts here and here respectively). We provided a response to the consultation and were pleased to see the Nov 1st announcement that government bodies must comply with a set of open standards principles.

The speaker from the Cabinet Office was Tariq Rashid (IT Reform group) and we were treated to a quite candid assessment of the challanges faced by government IT, with particular reference to OSS. His assessment of the issues and how to deal with them was cogent and believable, if also a little scary.

Here are a few of the things that caught my attention.

Outsource the Brawn not the Brain

Over a period of many years the supply of well-informed and deeply technical capability in government has been depleted such that too many decisions are made without there being an appropriate "intelligent customer". To quote Tariq: "we shouldn't be spending money unless we know what the alternatives are." The particular point being made was about OSS alternatives - and they have produced an Open Source Procurement Toolkit to challenge myths and to guide people to alternatives - but the same line of argument extends to there being a poor understanding of the sources of technical lock-in (as opposed to commercial lock-in) and how chains of dependency could introduce inertia through decisions that are innocuous from a naive analysis.

By my analysis, the Cabinet Office IT reform team are the exception that proves the general point. It is also a point that universities and colleges should be wary of as their senior management tries to cut out "expensive people we don't really need".

The Current Procurement Approach is Pathological

There is something slightly ironic that it takes a Tory government to seriously attack an approach which sees the greatest fraction of the incredible £21 billion p.a. central government spend on IT go to a handful of big IT houses (yes, countable on 2 hands).

In short: the procurement approach, which typically involves a large amount of bundling-up, reduces competition and inhibits SMEs and providers of innovative solutions as well as blocking more agile approaches.

At the intersection between procurement approach and brain-outsourcing is the critical issue that the IT that is usually acquired lacks a long term view of architecture; this becomes reduced to the scope of tendered work and build around the benefits of the supplier.

Emphasis on Procurement

Most of the presentations placed most emphasis on the benefits of OSS in terms of procurement and cost and this was a central theme of Tariq's talk also. Having spent long enough consorting with OSS-heads I found this to be rather narrow. What, for example, about the opportunities for public sector bodies to engage in acts of co-creation, either to lead or significantly contribute to OSS projects. There are many examples of commercial entities making significant investments in developer salaries while taking a hands-off approach to governance of the open source product (e.g. IBM and the eclipse platform).

For now, it seems, this kind of engagement is one step ahead of what is feasible in central government; there is a need for thinking to move on, to mature, from where it is now. I also suspect that there is plenty of low-hanging fruit - easy cases to make for cost savings in the near term - whereas co-creation is a longer term strategy. Tariq added that it might be only 2-3 years before government was ready to begin making direct contributions to LibreOffice, which is already being trialled in some departments.

Another of the speakers, representing sambruk (one of the partners in OSEPA, the project that organised the conference) seems to be heading towards more of a consortium model that could lead to something akin to the Sakai or Kuali model for Swedish municipality administration.

Conclusion

For all the Cabinet Office has a fairly small budget, its gatekeeper role - it must approve all spending proposals over £5 million and has some good examples of having prompted significant savings (e.g. £12 -> £2 million on a UK Borders procurement) - makes it a force to be reckoned with. Coupled with an attitude (as I perceive it) of wanting to understand the options and best current thinking on topics such as open source and open standards, this makes for a potent force in changing government IT.

The challenge for universities and colleges is to effect the same kind of transformation without an equivalent to the Cabinet Office and in the face of sector fragmentation (and, at best, some fairly loose alliances of sovereign city states).

open source, standards

Earlier this year the UK Government Cabinet Office published what I thought was a rather good set of proposals for the role of open standards in government IT. They describe it as a "formal public consultation on the definition and mandation of open standards for software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT." There are naturally points where we have critical comments but the direction of travel is broadly one that CETIS supports. The topic of mandation is, however, one to be approached with a great deal of caution in our view.

Our full response, which should be read alongside the consultation document (which includes the questions), is available for your information.

The consultation has now been extended to June 4th 2012 following the revelation of a conflict of interest; the chair of a public consultation meeting in April was found to be also working for Microsoft. This is the latest in a long series of concerns about Microsoft lobbying reported in Computer Weekly and elsewhere. I am actually encouraged by the Cabinet Office response both to FoI requests linked to meetings with Microsoft and to this recent revelation; they do seem to be trying to do the right thing.

standards

The two parts of a draft British Standard (BS), "BS 8581 - Exchanging course related information – Course advertising profile" have recently been released for public comment on the British Standard Institute "Draft Review" website.

This standard is heavily based on the XCRI-CAP 1.2 specification, which has been developed and piloted over the past few years with support from JISC and CETIS, and would create a British Standard that is consistent with the European Standard "Metadata for Learning Opportunities - Advertising" (EN 15982, also to be adopted as BS) but extends it and provides more detail suited to UK application.

The two parts for public review, which closes on April 30th 2012, are:

• BS 8581-1 - Exchanging course related information – Course advertising profile – Specification
• BS 8581-2 - Exchanging course related information – Course advertising profile – Code of practice

Registration is required to access the drafts and comment.

Background information and details of implementations of XCRI may be found on the XCRI-CAP website.

standards

In December 2011, Version 1.0 of "Information Principles for the UK Public Sector" (pdf) was published by the Cabinet Office. The principles have been endorsed by both the CIO and CTO councils within government. What surprised me is how good this document is.

The approach taken recognises that the principles will be implemented in diverse ways according to the context. It is well written and full of material which strikes me as being widely applicable (not just to government bodies) in addition to containing a number of points that indicate a progressive attitude to information. In particular, "Principle 4 - Information is Standardised and Linkable", gives me cause to nod with approval.

The standards message is not, of course, a new one for The Government; it is the inclusion of "linkable" in a principle that will be applied across government activities which is. This is not simply "linked data is cool" expressed in Civil Service Speak; the principle is deeper than that and speaks to me of a possible paradigm shift in the way [collected] data is understood.

Under Implications for Information Strategy, it recommends "a framework for linking information is established" and goes on to say:

"Aspects to consider include:

• Unambiguous identification of items (eg using authoritative reference data, or URIs)
• Classifying items and the relationships between them.
• Linking of items (eg potentially using the open standard web mechanisms governed by the W3C)

Consideration should be given to both internal linkages to other information sources within the organisation, and also to external linkages to other information sources across government."

In essence, I see this as being indicative of a shift away from conceiving of data as "stuff in databases" and towards "distributed data on the network". I see this as being a Really Big Deal and significantly more sophisticated than the piecemeal publication of data seen so far (even on data.gov.uk, which remains an important innovation).

By itself, of course, Principle 4 achieves nothing but two recent events and the Principle add up to suggest that this is not just a pipe-dream.

The first event, which is a culmination of several priors, was the initiation of the in-elegantly, but accurately. named "Interim Regulatory Partnership Group: Project B, Redesigning the higher education data and information landscape". While this project is only at present deliberating on a feasibility report, a bit of imagination of where this might go with some inspiration from the Reports and Documents (e.g. the "HE Information Landscape Study", pdf) leads towards making more use of distributed collected data. Maybe I am making a leap too far but a combination of reducing data collection burden with principles of collect-once-use-many-times inevitably leads to linking data between (among others) UCAS, the Student Loans Company and HESA since it is inconceivable to me that we would not  have a multi-party landscape.

The second, more recent, event was the occasion of a discussion with a member of the Technical Support Service of the Information Standards Board for education skills and children's services (ISB TSS) from which I understand the intention is to assign URIs to entities in the standards the ISB TSS creates. Only a small step but...

My take-home message on all of this: nothing will happen very quickly but the gradual permeation of an understanding of the implications of distributed data on the network will make possible conversations, decisions and interventions that are currently rather difficult and the drivers behind Project B are also drivers that will, I hope, accelerate this process.

standards

The Government Chief Technology Officers' Council has recently begun an online survey of open standards.

This covers views on the meaning of "open standard" as well as relevance of specific standards.

Obviously, CETIS people will be responding but I'd like to encourage everyone with an interest in open standards to do so. I will be keeping an eye out for what might have been missed from the survey. Be warned, however, it might take some time if you have interests spanning several standardisation areas.

standards

The British Standards Institute committee IST/43 - ICT for Learning, Education and Training ("LET") - has been in existence for about 10 years. What does IST/43 do? What follows is my response as an individual who happens to be chair of IST/43.

In the first few years, IST/43 had a number of sub-groups ("panels") involved in the creation of British Standards. It was a time when there was a lot of activity worldwide and many new groups created. What became clear to many people in IST/43 was that a much larger number of stakeholders had to be marshalled in order to achieve sucess than we had thought. In essence: we generally have to work at international scale if focussed on standards specific to LET and otherwise appropriate generic web standards. At present there are no standards under development in IST/43 and all previous panels have been disbanded.

So: where does this leave IST/43? In addition to creating British Standards, IST/43 is the shadow committee for European and international standardisation in ICT for Learning, Education and Training. These are known as TC353 and SC36 respectively. IST/43 effectively controls the vote at these committees on behalf of the United Kingdom. Full European Standards are called "European Norms" (ENs) and automatically become national standards. International standards created in SC36 do not automatically become British Standards; IST/43 decides one way or the other.

I will continue with a summary of current work programmes in TC353 (European) and SC36 (international) and indicate for each work item what the current position of IST/43 is. If you are interested in any of these areas, whether agreeing or disagreeing with the position that IST/43 takes as the "UK position", you can nominate yourself for membership of the committee (email addresses at the end). Strictly speaking, it is an organisation that nominates; committee members represent that organisation. Comments below on the members of the committee should generally be understood to be representative of nominating organisations.

European

Work item:

BS EN 15943 Curriculum Exchange Format (CEF) Data Model

Comment:

This work, which allows for the exchange of subjects/topics covered in a curriculum, originated from work undertaken in the UK with support from BECTa and has had active support from IST/43 during its standardisation. Voting on the final standard is underway (Feb 2011).

Work item:

BS EN 15981 European Learner Mobility Model

Comment:

Members IST/43 and others in their nominating organisations have been significant contributors to this EN, which matches the requirements of the Bologna Process and European Union treaties on recognition of qualifications across the EU. A formal vote on the final draft standard will end in February 2011.

Work item:

BS EN 15982 Metadata for Learning Opportunities (MLO) - Advertising

Comment:

Members IST/43 and others in their nominating organisations have been significant contributors to this EN, which harmonises a number of nationally-developed specifications for exchanging course information (XCRI in the UK). A final draft has recently been submitted to the secretariat of TC353 and should be out for ballot later in 2011.

International

There are three broad classes of activity in SC36: those that create full International Standards (denoted "IS"), those that produce lower-status Technical Reports (denoted "TR") and study periods. Study periods are not enumerated below.

WG1 Vocabulary

Work items:

ISO/IEC 2382-36:2008/Cor.1:2010(E)
ISO/IEC 2382-36:2008/Amd.1:2010(E)

Comment:

ISO/IEC 2382-36 is "Information technology -- Vocabulary -- Part 36: Learning, education and training". These are corrections and amendments. There is little interest from IST/43 but a "yes" was registered at the last vote.

WG2 Collaborative technology

Work item:

ISO/IEC 19778-4 (TR), Collaborative technology – Collaborative workplace – Part 4: User guide for implementing, facilitating and improving collaborative applications

Comment:

There is no participation from IST/43.

WG3 Learner information

Work item:

ISO/IEC 29187-1 (IS), Identification of Privacy Protection requirements pertaining to Learning, Education and Training (ITLET) – Part 1

Comment:

There is no participation from IST/43.

Work items:

ISO/IEC 20006-1 (IS), Information Model for Competency — Part 1: Competency General Framework and Information Model
ISO/IEC 20006-2 (IS), Information Model for Competency — Part 2: Proficiency Information Model
ISO/IEC 20006-3 (TR), Information Model for Competency — Part 3: Guidelines for the Aggregation of Competency Information and Data

ISO/IEC 24763 (TR), Conceptual Reference Model for Competencies and Related Objects

ISO/IEC 20013 (TR), e-Portfolio Reference Model

Comment:

This collection of work items is of interest to IST/43 and has attracted new committee members during the last year or so. Substantial engagement and commenting on drafts has occurred and it has been proposed to convene a panel under IST/43 to coordinate UK engagement and make voting recommendations to IST/43.

The Conceptual Reference Model is near completion but the other work items are in the earlier stages of drafting. At present there are areas where consensus has not yet been reached in addition to a substantial amount of work being required in drafting and editorial.

Work items:

ISO/IEC 29140-1 (TR), Nomadicity and Mobility Part 1 - Part 1: Nomadicity Reference Model
ISO/IEC 29140-2 (TR), Nomadicity and Mobility - Part 2 - Learner Information Model for Mobile Learning

Comment:

There is no participation from IST/43.

WG4 Management and delivery of learning, education and training

Work items:

ISO/IEC 19788-1 (IS), Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 1: Framework
ISO/IEC 19788-2 (IS), Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 2: Dublin Core Elements
ISO/IEC 19788-3 (IS), Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 3: Basic Application Profile
ISO/IEC 19788-4 (IS), Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 4: Technical Elements
ISO/IEC 19788-5 (IS), Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 5: Educational Elements
ISO/IEC 19788-6 (IS), Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 6: Availability, Distribution, and Intellectual Property Elements

Comment:

The essence of "Metadata for Learning Resources" (MLR) is an international standard that over-arches Dublin Core metadata (which is already an ISO standard in an older version than the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative currently recommends) and IEEE LOM (Learning Object Metadata).

Opinions on the MLR work vary in the UK and it has been the subject of many discussions over the last few years. A series of comments and criticisms have been submitted to the working group on part 1 and dealt with to the satisfaction of IST/43 such that a "yes" vote was registered for the final vote on part 1. Parts 2 and 3 are at earlier stages and have also attracted recent "yes" votes (although "abstain" has been registered in the past when no views were presented to IST/43). It does not follow that "yes" votes will be registered for all parts.

Work items:

ISO/IEC 12785-2 (IS),  Content Packaging – Part 2: XML Binding
ISO/IEC 12785-3 (IS),  Content Packaging – Part 3: Best Practice and Implementation Guide

Comment:

This work is effectively standardising IMS Content Packaging. IST/43 supports the work and has adopted Part 1 (the information model) as a British Standard (BS ISO/IEC 12785-1:2009). Extended comments have been submitted into the working group.

WG5 Quality assurance and descriptive frameworks

Work items:

ISO/IEC 19796-1 (IS), Quality Management, Assurance, and Metrics – Part 1: General Approach
ISO/IEC 19796-2 (IS), Quality Management, Assurance, and Metrics – Part 2: Quality Model
ISO/IEC 19796-4 (TR), Quality Management, Assurance, and Metrics – Part 4: Best Practice and Implementation Guide
ISO/IEC 19796-5 (TR), Quality Management, Assurance, and Metrics – Part 5: Guide "How to use ISO/IEC 19796-1"

Comment:

The position taken by IST/43 on these pieces of work is largely passive; there is not strong interest but they are recognised as being of potential interest to some in the UK and it is believed that they are not in conflict with UK requirements. Parts 1 and 3 have been adopted as a British Standard.

Work items:

[not yet approved] Quality Standard for the Creation and Delivery of Fair, Valid and Reliable e-Tests

Comment:

This item has not yet been voted on by participating members of SC36 but the work item proposal is well developed and has been championed by a member of IST/43. This will be a proposal from the UK to SC36. See also a previous article I wrote.

WG6 Supportive technology and specification integration

Work items:

ISO/IEC 24725-1 (TR), supportive technology and specification integration – Part 001: Framework
ISO/IEC 24725-2 (TR), supportive technology and specification integration – Part 002: Rights Expression Language (REL) – Commercial Applications
ISO/IEC 24725-3 (TR), supportive technology and specification integration – Part 003: Platform and Media Taxonomy

Comment:

There is no participation from IST/43.

WG7 Culture, language and individual needs

Work items:

ISO/IEC 24751 Part-9 (IS): Access for All Personal User Interface Preferences
ISO/IEC 24751 Part-10 (IS): Access for All User Interface Characteristics
ISO/IEC 24751 Part-11 (IS): Access For All Preferences for Non- digital Resources (PNP-ND)
ISO/IEC 24751 Part-12 (IS): Access For All Non-digital Resource Description (NDRD)
ISO/IEC 24751 Part-13 (IS): Access For All Personal Needs and Preferences for LET Events and Venues (PNP-EV)
ISO/IEC 24751 Part-14 (IS): Access For All LET Events and Venues Description (EVD)

Comment:

This work has many roots in older IMS work on accessibility and the revisions are being fed back into IMS. Access for All has been actively contributed to be a member of IST/43, although his continued participation is in jeopardy due to lack of funding. Other members of IST/43 support the work but are unlikely to have the capacity to directly contribute.

Work item:

ISO/IEC 20016-1, ITLET - Language Accessibility and Human Interface Equivalencies (HIEs) in e-Learning applications: Part-1: Principles, Rules and Semantic Data Attributes

Comment:

There has been little participation from IST/43. A "no" vote with strong comments was agreed at the last IST/43.

Any work where "no participation" is stated will attract abstain votes without comment from IST/43 and is unlikely even to be discussed at committee meetings.

Tailpiece

Although the above indicates that there is currently no work on a British Standard in IST/43, the committee has discussed a new work item to create a British Standard that implements "BS EN 15982 Metadata for Learning Opportunities (MLO) - Advertising" along with an XML binding and vocabularies for use in the UK. This completes a cycle where the work of the JISC-funded XCRI projects was contributed into the EN process; the EN represents a core common language that each member state can conform with and extend for its local needs. Once the EN is approved, an "acceptance case" will be presented to BSI for this new work.

For more information:

• British Standards Institute IST/43
• CEN TC353 business plan and other information
• ISO SC36 published standards
• XCRI - public site, development site

This article is my own words and, although I believe it to be accurate, I ask readers to recognise that it is not approved by IST/43.

Anyone interested in joining IST/43 should contact the committee chair (me, a.r.cooper@bolton.ac.uk) or committee secretary (alex.price@bsigroup.com).

OER, cetis-fis, cetis-standards, enterprise, semantic technologies, social software, standards

I just caught an announcement of a new CEN Workshop that looks rather interesting from an interoperability point of view.

"The Global e-Business Interoperability Test Bed project (GITB) focuses on methodologies and architectures that support e-business standards assessment and testing activities from early stages of eBusiness standards implementation, to proof-of-concept demonstrations, to conformance and interoperability testing." - from http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Workshops/Pages/Testbed.aspx

The business plan is ambitious, to say the least, but even modest advance in technical terms could have significant practical benefit. I certainly see the future of interoperability standards in education being meshed with achievements of global eBusiness interoperability as well as global web standards.

standards

A draft for public comment of a new "Publicly Available Specification" (PAS) is available until October 5th. PAS's are not full standards and have not been through the same level of (time-consuming) consensus-assurance as such.

The full title is "Code of practice for the planning, implementation and operation of a biometric system" and it is otherwise known as PAS92:2010. This PAS looks like a helpful guide to a complex legal, technical and ethically-contentious area (I am no expert to comment on its accuracy).

Comments may be made via the BSI drafts website, specifically for PAS92 at http://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/591. You will need to register.

identity management, standards