Plan

• Why Open ICT Standards are important
• W3C and its work
• The road ahead

Open Standards: Big Picture

Not just a technical problem.

Open Standards Policies

• No-one should require people to purchase particular software for access
• Promote longevity of information
• Openness helps to maximize reuse of knowledge
  • colleagues, friends, public, companies, governments

• Open standards promote research

Open Standard Definition

A lot of debates nowadays for a common definition of Open Standards(IGF, EC, etc)

• Transparent process
• Open participation
• Technical Consensus and Appeal
• Running code
• Free and Persistent Specification
• W3C Patent Policy for Web Technologies

Challenges...

• The Internet and the Web is the easy part : Web, email, forum, online chat, IM, etc
• Lots of non-internet technologies: telephone, fax, PDA, SMS, MMS, Wifi, Bluetooth, RFID, biometric, smart cards, TV and radio, etc
• New technology-specific platforms: geolocation, foaf blog, mashup, ads, etc

W3C Exec Summary

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an International Consortium where Member and External organizations, a full-time technical staff, and the public work together to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing Web standards such as protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

• Goals: Interoperability, Universality, Functionalities
• Neutral/nonforprofit, consensus based, open participation, open results
• ~400 members, ~60 staff,
• ~50 Working Groups ~20 Coordination Groups and Interest Groups
• Hosting: MIT (America), ERCIM (Europe) and Keio University (Japan) + 17 Offices
• Advisory Board, Technical Architecture Group
• Liaisons with 40+ other standards bodies, Accountable to the global Public

Web Standards

W3C Eating its own dog food!

W3C works with thousands of engineers using the Web and the Internet as a platform.

• Emails, open archives (e.g. HTML5 WG today)
• Web sites under w3.org (public, member, team)
• Web 2.0 applications (action item, issues tracker, web survey)
• Web DB tools (to manager participants)
• Instant Message (IRC) + bots for teleconferencing
• VOIP, slides in HTML/CSS, etc

Many using Semantic Web technologies on the server, and accessible to participants with disabilities.

Like IETF, our process is one of our specification (bootstrap principle)

Transparency has many faces

• Accessible Web site

  

• Use of collaborative tools
  • balance risks
  • design a contingency plan

Open Data

Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations (could be Your Data as well..)

• Complete: All Public data is made available online.
• Primary: Public data is as collected at the source
• Timely: Public data is made available asap
• Accessible: Public data is available to all
• Machine readable: Public data allow automated processing.
• Non-discriminatory: Public data is available to anyone, no registration
• Non-proprietary: Public data is encoded using Open Standards.
• License-free: Public Data is available at no cost.

See original OGD document.

Data Integration

XML is not enough (but then again, what is?)

Semantic Technologies

• Example: reducing the cost of road excavations
• Geographic Referencing Framework

• ...many more SWEO cases

Security concerns

• Authoritative source
• Trust
• Provenance
• Security
• Integrity

Conclusion

• Online services and access becoming a right.
• Open IP and Web Standards proven to WORK!
• More important than ever to solve problems: support Web standard development and educate more stakeholders.