1. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk JISC Standards: A Presentation To The JISC Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ UKOLN is supported by: Date: 15 June 2005 Location:West Wing Committee room St Thomas’ Hospital

2. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Contents This brief talk will cover: Background to use of standards in JISC- funded activities Limitations of previous approaches Layered approach developed by QA Focus Doing the work Supporting the work Building on the work

3. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Background JISC development work: Traditionally based on use of open standards to: Support interoperability Maximise accessibility Avoid vendor lock-in Provide architectural integrity Help ensure long-term preservation History: eLib Standards document (v1 – 1996, v2 – 1998) DNER Standards document (2001) which influenced: NOF-digi Technical Standards..

4. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Lessons Learnt Experiences of the QA Focus (and NOF-digi Technical Advisory Service) revealed problems: Lack of knowledge of standards Lack of resources Immaturity of standards Failure for standards to take off Difficulties when building on existing work Uncertainty of what to do if standards not implemented correctly …

5. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Need For Flexibility There is a need for flexibility in the standards infrastructure: Learning the lessons from OSI networking protocols (the great networking standard of the 1980s!) Today: Conveyor belt of great new Web standards is slowing down Questions as to whether Web (for example) is becoming over-complex  "Web service considered harmful"  The lowercase semantic web / Microformats Lighter-weight alternatives being developed Responses from the commercial world

6. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Compliance Issues What does must mean? You must comply with HTML standards  What if I don't?  What if nobody does?  What if I use PDF? You must clear rights on all resources you digitise You must provide properly audited accounts  What if I don't? There is a need to clarify the meaning of must and for an understandable, realistic and reasonable compliance regime

7. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk The Context There will be a context to use of standards: The intended use:  Innovative / research  Mainstream  Key middleware component  Small-scale deliverable Organisational culture:  HE vs FE  Teaching vs Research  Service vs Development  … Available Funding & Resources:  Significant funding & training to make use of important new standards  Minimal funding - current skills should be used …

8. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk The Standards 'Framework' xxx OSS JISC JISC / project 3 rd Parties The policies should be modular – i.e. the standards policy should not define accessibility policies, etc. Owner

9. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Scope Of The Standards Work The Standards Catalogue will: Cover JISC's development programmes Cover other JISC-funded development work Cover JISC-funded services Cover JISC itself Be available for others (e.g. institutional work) Content areas will include: Web  File formats Metadata  Resource discovery E-learning  Addressing Alerting  Authentication E-Research  …

10. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Implementation How might this approach be used in practice? Programme XX Call / Contract Committees Advisers Programme Team Proposals must comply with XYZ standard Proposals should seek to comply with XYZ Proposals should describe approach to XYZ Projects audited to ensure compliance with … Projects should develop self-assessment procedures and submit findings to JISC Projects should submit proposed approach for approval/information Development Programme JISC Manager Report Contract Report must be in MS Word / … and use JISC template … JISC Manager JISC Service Contract Service must … Services must self-assess … and highlight significant deviations from …

11. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Collating The Content We are using a Wiki to collect information about the standards: Being used by a small groups of trusted individuals Avoids bottleneck for uploading and maintaining content Note: the Wiki is used for creation & maintenance of the data and will not be the final repository At this stage, a simple template will be used. This can be enhanced in future iterations.

12. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Publishing The Content The Standards Catalogue: Needs to be available as a document which can be easily read Data should be reusable and interoperable:  JISC Framework environment  For CIE  … Plans: Version 1 available as document Data ported to CETIS's Framework software We are currently talking to CETIS about this Is it possible? What are the resources implications …

13. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Quality Assurance Infrastructure Will projects and services implement standards as required? How will we know? Compliance checking: External checkers: Approach used in NOF-digi. But: Concerns over big brother Does big brother have expertise? Alien to HE culture Standards not embedded into working practices (done because funders want it) Self-assessment: Approach recommended by QA Focus (and should be done even if external checking) Need for projects/services to define their QA processes

14. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Support Infrastructure Need for a support infrastructure which covers: Why the standards are needed? Pros and cons of deployment strategies Ways of ensuring standards are being implemented correctly We're looking to build on QA Focus work: 80+ briefing documents and 30+ case studies published Licensed under Creative Commons UKOLN and AHDS will continue to publish new documents (new documents on Folksonomies, Persistent Identifiers, Wikis, etc. published recently)

15. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Building On The Work The JISC work will form the basis of similar work for the CIE (Common Information Environment): Working with MLA, BBC, BECTA, … Pooling existing resources Identifying areas of agreement and diversity Note that the CIE work will not aim to reconcile differences, but to identify those areas

16. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Standards Catalogue Process There's a need for developing and enhancing the standards catalogue in order to: Update with new standards Learn from feedback and experiences Review Policies Context Compliance Support Infrastructure QA Framework User Experiences Funder's Experiences Standards … Framework The Standards Catalogue can be integrated with the JISC's 'Framework'

17. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Conclusions To conclude: Approach to developing standards catalogue based on QA Focus's experiences, and its review by Jon Duke/Andy Jordan Acknowledges importance of context Allows for hard-line implementation (which is needed in some areas) Will be developed within a CIE context This will be an ongoing process