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Open standards compatibility should be a major selection criterion for software to ensure its interoperability,
it should be recognized that open standards may evolve quickly and preferences for any open standard or versions of open standards, including OSS-style open standards, should be avoided to preserve the utmost flexibility in a best value assessment of technology and solutions for administration interaction and business problems.
Further Investigations
Open Standardsv
A major contributor to interoperability is voluntary open standards development plus voluntary open standards adoption. Open standards development, without significant adoption of the resultant standards, does nothing in the effort to achieve interoperability. Standards, like software, must evolve to take advantage of technology advances. Best-ofbreed solutions, evaluated on a best value for money basis, that are continually updated and have software support to meet customer standards-compatibility expectations are the best approach to achieve and ensure ongoing interoperability. Governments, through their procurement, research, and policies, should support and encourage the efforts of the ICT industry to voluntarily develop, adopt and promote open standards. Applications developed should fully leverage the competitive marketplace to reach interoperability. The ICT industry has devoted considerable resources towards voluntarily defining, and changing hardware and software to adhere to open technology standards. Government, through its procurement, research, and ICT policies should support these efforts and fully utilize them to reach interoperability. Cost effective, open-standards compatible hardware and software, where the underlying standards have been widely adopted, is an enabler of interoperability. Open-standards compatible software can be developed using any software development model, and can be licensed under a variety of business models. Open source does not mean or imply open standard or compatibility with open standards, and vice-versa, as open standards may be implemented by software developed under any business or development model. Open source is not a standard or set of standards, but instead simply software whose code is publicly available. Nothing in and of it ensures that OSS is interoperable, even with other OSS programs. For instance, the freedom to modify OSS code necessarily provides the ability to change the code in ways that may undermine a programs ability to interoperate with other programs and devices. Beyond open standards compatibility, general business requirements, functionality requirements, total cost of ownership, and other elements of a best value for money evaluation should drive the selection of software, not how the software was developed or is licensed. Looking to this issue from a merely technical point of view, it is evident that successful implementations and emerging normative standards from Europe and central governments
make an extensive reference to the W3C Recommendations. In fact, applications conformant with the basic W3C goals (universal access, semantic web, web of trust) and design requirements, like interoperability and decentralization, are perfectly in line with the present and future requirements of applications. In fact, technical interoperability, portability, accessibility are just a consequence of conforming to W3C Recommendations, and any existing application conformant to these standards will conform to emerging regulations with little or no effort. Therefore, being active actors in developing web technologies can be an excellent opportunity to be competitive in the market. Even more important, moving without taking into account what is going on in the field, can result in a tremendous waste of resources.
The document is part of QualiPSo Deliverable D3.1.1b Technical Interoperability: Report about Important Issues, Requirements and State-of-the-Art , pages 52-53.
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competitive environment, ICT companies offering open standards compatible proprietary software solutions have strong incentives to deliver robust functionality and open standards based interoperability to meet customer requirements and sell their products.
The document is part of QualiPSo Deliverable D3.1.1b Technical Interoperability: Report about Important Issues, Requirements and State-of-the-Art , pages 53-54.
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consumers who take the service. Large networks are thus attractive, but value can also be created by linking (large and small) networks. If, for example, a mobile telephony network is still small, if it has interconnection with all the other fixed and mobile telephony networks the user can nevertheless reach all the other telephone users and the value of the network is high. This is commonly called a gateway or, if modifications are needed, an adapter. It goes without saying that it is in the public interest to maximize the value of telecommunications networks and services to end-users, and hence to encourage interconnection and interconnectivity. Precisely now that all kinds of new fixed and networks are being created, it is important to link these new systems to the existing networks as far as possible, in order to maximize their value to the end-users. A second motive for governments to take action to promote (technical) interoperability is that a lack of ways to link networks can result in undesirable organization of the market. If networks are not (or cannot be) linked, this strengthens the dominant position of large, existing parties. The desired competitive market will not then come into being. The absence of technical compatibility options can be seized on by parties with substantial market power to evade access obligations. In other words, access obligations are of little effect if the technical potential for interoperability is lacking. The third motive concerns the desire for a technology-neutral policy. Policymakers are becoming increasingly convinced that policy support for certain technologies is a risky approach, requiring that the winners be identified in advance. In practice this turns out to be difficult, certainly for a government. In addition, the consequences of wrong choices are great (one has only to think of the European initiatives for high-definition television). Finally, some important aspects should be also considered: Interoperability can be helpful in relation to launching application areas that governments consider important, such as e-Government. In this context one thinks of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the IDA eLink middleware design. Areas such as e-health and e-learning are also highly important. The concept of interoperability fits well into present European regulation. The degree to which technical standards operate as a barrier to access to markets often plays a part in international trade agreements. A high degree of interoperability can partly eliminate this source of friction.
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The document is part of QualiPSo Deliverable D3.1.1b Technical Interoperability: Report about Important Issues, Requirements and State-of-the-Art , pages 54-56.
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