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with those of their suppliers and customers are concerned with

how Internet software standards can help mitigate the risk of

adopting new technologies. Governments too are realizing the

limitations of a shortsighted approach to standardized vocabu-

laries, as they find themselves hampered by attempts to share

information between agencies and levels (federal, regional/state,

local) and by their need to interact with other countries and with

businesses covering a wide range of industry sectors. The chaotic

communications between public sector agencies in the USA

following the tragedy of hurricane ‘Katrina’ in 2005 demonstrated

how emergency management needed to integrate with public

safety, law enforcement, healthcare, environmental cleanup, and

other disaster response mechanisms – and how difficult this was

to achieve in one of the most advanced economies in the world.

Now, in the run-up to WSIS Tunis, governments, business

and civil society groups are increasingly calling for open tech-

nology standards. These are the digital equivalent of a common

gauge for railway tracks and are not the same thing as open

source software. Both proprietary and open source software can

run on the “tracks” laid down by open technology standards.

OASIS members look to WSIS to give new impetus to develop-

ing an open, global ICT ecosystem. This is vital if we are to

enable the less-advantaged countries, enterprises and other

groups to have confidence in the accessibility of digital

networks. Open standards are an essential part of the infra-

structure of an inclusive, global Information Society.

What could be the solutions?

International cooperation is absolutely necessary to arrive at a

common point of reference against which industry groups and

government agencies can map their standards vocabularies.

When XML became a recommendation of the World Wide Web

Consortium (W3C) in 1998, organizations such as

CommerceNet started to evangelize the practical benefits of

using XML in business vocabularies and interface protocols.

However, industry groups rushed into developing their own

XML vocabularies, despite the efforts of visionaries in multilat-

eral organizations, especially the UN, who advocated for

cross-industry adoption of a common business language and

agreement on element naming design rules.

Since WSIS 2003, many XML vocabulary experts and indus-

try associations have worked on the creation of an open

standard using XML for a common business language. The

Universal Business Language (UBL) OASIS Standard and the

UBL Naming & Design Rules OASIS Standard, together with

the UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Components Technical

Specification provide a means for cross-referencing some of the

industry-specific, XML-based vocabularies.

Researchers are also looking to various combinations of web

services with semantic web and grid computing to come up with

ways to apply reasoning tools to achieve some level of adaptive

information that could be applied to solving some business

needs today. They are seeking ways to enable the automated

invocation of business functionality through message exchange,

which holds the promise of fast progress in this area. There are

an increasing number of web services using basic semantics that

are starting to appear. Many services, such as travel reservations,

book selling, stock monitoring, banking and reporting, which

today are generally used manually by human users, could, in

the near future, be mediated by computational entities.

For such interoperability to succeed, however, implementa-

tion will need to occur within the e-business frameworks that

companies and industry groups are building and should be

based on some common cross-industry functional elements.

Industry adoption of common implementation methodologies

and common naming and design rules will also help to reduce

cross-sectoral barriers.

An additional approach, based on lessons learned from past

mistakes, is beginning to emerge as a way to achieve both cross-

sectoral interoperability in e-business semantic frameworks and

reduce the time-to-market for development of open standards

to use across industries in their e-business frameworks and

semantic interactions.

At OASIS, we see another example emerging of how cross-

sectoral standards can be developed more quickly and with

greater industry adoption on a global scale. The model links

open standards development processes closer to university and

government-sponsored research efforts. Active involvement of

technology vendors, small and large, helps to identify

approaches that can be implemented in software solutions. With

industry associations and end-user businesses taking an active

role in setting requirements and priorities, even version 1 spec-

ifications are assured to be usable and readily embraced. With

governments collaborating in the process, the results are also

more likely to meet public policy requirements and see wide-

spread adoption, especially in many of the global markets where

international trade is vital.

To understand our best options for the future, we should try

to avoid the mistakes of the past. The lessons learned in the

development of XML-based industry-specific domain vocabu-

laries help to chart a path forward for the application of web

services standards in the creation of service-oriented architec-

tures for various industries. This path is built upon common

web services standards that are applied in a comprehensive

fashion, using a set of common web service elements that imple-

ment common methodologies.

OASIS and its partners, such as UN/CEFACT at the inter-

governmental level, hope to work in the context of the follow-up

and implementation of the WSIS to construct an open stan-

dards environment. Common standards will help to ensure that

all participants in e-business, whether large or small, in public

or private sectors, can interpret information in a uniform way

and communicate without technical barriers. Open, interna-

tional standards are an important part of any effective strategy

to bridge the so-called digital divide and enable less-advantaged

countries to compete in the global economy and Information

Society.

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Examples of OASIS standards being endorsed by governments

Emergency Management Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)

ebXML Messaging

ebXML Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement (CPPA)

ebXML Registry/Repository

OpenDocument Format for Office Applications

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)

Universal Business Language (UBL)

For more information please contact:

http://www.oasis-open.org

Email:

patrick.gannon@oasis-open.org