What do records and information managers need to know about the Web's Three Os? Open Source, Open Standards and Open Data? ARMA Ottawa IM Days - Nov 28, 2012

1. The Web’s Three Os:
Open Standards, Open Source, Open Data
What do Records & Information Managers Need to Know?
ARMA NCR - IM Days
Ottawa – November 2012
Cheryl McKinnon
Candy Strategies Inc.
Cheryl@CandyStrategies.com
www.candystrategies.com
@CherylMcKinnon

2. Introduction
• Cheryl McKinnon - President of Candy Strategies Inc.
• 17+ years in the content/information management
industry
• Senior management roles with AIIM, Nuxeo,
OpenText, Hummingbird
• Co-author of new AIIM ECM Master Courses (now
offered here in Ottawa)
• Volunteer director with OSACAN.org (Open Source
Alliance of Canada

3. Agenda
• What a Difference a Year Has Made
• Overview of Definitions
• Importance of Open Standards for Information
Management
• Rise of Open Source in Information Management
• Momentum of the Open Data Movement

4. What a Difference a Year Has Made
• Survey of open source, open standards and open
data adoption in Canada – big progress since last
year
• Public Sector institutions in UK and US have
many valuable lessons and research to share

5. The Web’s Three Os:
Open Standards
Open Source
Open Data

6. What are Open Standards?
• Not controlled by any single hardware or software
vendor, often developed by consensus
• Royalty-free to use
• Often created or managed by an independent
standards body or foundation

7. What are Open Standards?
• What makes a good open standard?
• Supported by vendors and end-users alike
• Made transparently
• Be openly available
• Have a clear governance process
• Be relevant to market needs and drivers

8. What is Open Source?
• Roots back to the 1980s in the Free Software
Foundation
• Practices rooted in the 1960s/70s – early
research that evolved into the internet – open,
participatory software development
• Modern definition emerges in 1998 when web
browser Netscape Navigator (now Mozilla
Foundation) released as open source

9. What is Open Source?
• Open Source Initiative Founded in 1998
• Developed consistent terminology, sanctioned
software license agreements, practices and
definitions
• 10 Key characteristics including: free distribution,
availability of source code, accommodates
derived works, no discrimination against people,
groups or use
• http://opensource.org

10. What is Open Source?
• Simply? A way that a software developer licenses
and distributes its source code
• Variety of license types with wide acceptance in
courts and the software market
• Examples: GPL, Apache, MIT, Eclipse, LGPL
• Different licenses support different goals,
development models, re-use of source code

11. What is Open Data?
• Open Knowledge Foundation definition: “A piece of
data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and
redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the
requirement to attribute and/or share-alike”
• Government open data initiatives became high
profile in 2004 with the OECD declaration on open
access to publicly-funded data
• 2009-2011: More than 200 governments at all
levels initiate open data projects and online portals

12. The Web’s Three Os:
Open Standards
Open Source
Open Data

13. Value of Open Standards
• Interoperability
• Portability
• Digital Preservation

14. Value of Open Standards
• Document/Content Management Systems
• “Content Management Interoperability Services” (CMIS)
as an OASIS technical committee
• 1.0 Ratified in May 2010
• 1.1 - public review phase in August
• Retention Management now added to scope of standard

15. CMIS: Why and What is it?
• Statement of Purpose
• Define a domain model that can be used by
applications to work with one or more Content
Management systems
• Data Model, Abstract Capabilities, Set of
Bindings
• Problem of “islands of incompatible systems”
making it difficult for organizations and
application developers to integrate content
across and among systems

16. CMIS 1.1 – Updates Proposed
CMIS Client: Portal, Scan/Capture,
Content and Business Applications
Documents Metadata CRUD operations Filing
Folders Query : CMISQL
Checkin, Checkout Relations
Holds Versions Retention ACL Renditions
REST (AtomPub) or
SOAP
EMC/Docume
IBM/Filenet Nuxeo Sharepoint Alfresco …
ntum

17. Open Standards Support Portability
• Dublin Core
• Metadata foundation
behind many content
management and
library systems
• Core elements to
describe digital items
• Enables better search,
transfer, migration

18. Harvesting the Content Silos
(Don’t Smash Them…)
• Content becomes portable by
tapping into common ground
across diverse content
management systems
• Technical Use Cases
• Federated Repositories
• Repository to Repository
• Application to Repository

19. Open Standards for Digital Preservation
• Long way to go but: PDF/A and ODF (Open
Document Format) are starting points
• PDF/A an ISO Standard, ODF now an OASIS
technical standard for office applications
• Goal to remove hardware and operating
systems dependencies from viewing,
consuming content
• Avoid locked-in dependence on any one
vendor in precarious world of corporate
mergers & acquisitions

20. Open Standards in Government
• US Government committed
to sustainable and readable
formats for long term digital
preservation
• 2012 Directive on Records
Management
• UK Government committed
to open standards with
November 2012 Cabinet
announcement

21. Open Standards in Government
• Accessibility – Ensure web
resources can be read and
used by broadest possible
range of residents and
businesses
• W3C open standards for
web
• HTML5 – avoids lock-in of
app-specific access
• Support for rich media

22. The Web’s Three Os:
Open Standards
Open Source
Open Data

23. Is Open Source Safe to Use?
Yes.

24. Is Open Source Safe to Use?
• Concerns about “security” for open
source in government have been laid
to rest.
• US Department of Defense – 2011
“Lessons Learned” identifies open
source as superior for reducing
duplicate development efforts and by
having larger pool of experts to fix
bugs faster
• UK Cabinet Statement - 2011 –
“dispels myths” and finds no
difference in risk compared to
traditional systems.

25. Is Open Source Safe to Use?
• What if we need support to fix an issue or do customization?
• Strong communities: Popular platforms have 1000s of developers
• Vendor backed support companies: Corporations to sell full-
service support and maintenance packages
• Local experts: Access to code and distributed development
processes ensures expertise can flourish anywhere
• Strong foundations: often heavily supported by large software
vendors who develop and contribute code but don’t control
overall governance

26. Is Open Source Safe to Use?
• What about the licensing?
• Several widely accepted, well-understood, court-tested
licenses recognized by the OSI - opensource.org
• May be very permissive or very restrictive – with many
shades in between
• Choose technologies with licenses that meets your use
cases – to build commercial software? Or for an internal
application?

27. Benefits of Open Source Adoption
• Organizations of all sizes and budgets can at
last adopt information management tools
• The web provides opportunities for teams
across departments, branches, other levels of
government or private sector to collaborate on
joint requirements
• Information/content management tools no
longer available exclusively to those
organizations with large IM/IT budgets – all can
adopt solutions

28. Make Informed Decisions on Open Source
Adoption
• Cost models will be different than traditional
software license models
• Total Cost of Ownership considerations should
look at all factors
• UK Government TCO Open Source Toolkit – Calculat
• Balance zero license cost with apples-to-apples
needs for maintenance, support or developers

29. The Web’s Three Os:
Open Standards
Open Source
Open Data

30. Characteristics of Open Data
• Available and accessible
• Reusable and can be redistributed
• Permits universal participation
• These characteristics encourage interoperability
with other data sets or applications

31. Open Data Challenges and Risks
• Ensure privacy and confidentiality restrictions are respected
• Release of data in useless, closed, or proprietary formats
• Example: large complex tables in PDF rather than .ods
or .csv
• Inconsistent vocabulary, taxonomy and metadata used to
describe data sets
• Within a large department as well as across agencies or
other levels of government

32. Open Data in Canadian Public Sector
• Data.gc.ca – over
272,000 data sets
• 2013 commitment
to use an open
source portal
designed for open
data purposes
• Technology co-
developed by US,
India, other
governments

33. Open Data in Canadian Public Sector
• City governments
• Ottawa a leader
among local
governments in
Canada
• Provincial
governments
• Ontario
commits in fall
2012

34. Why the Web’s Three Os Matter

35. Digital = 21 Century Knowledge Economy
st

36. Creating the Digital Goods and Services
• Organizations can start an information management project –
faster and cheaper: Start testing, prototyping without
significant financial investment
• Access to open data and open source tools spurs the app-
economy
• Europe 2012 study – economic benefit of open source
valued at $450 Billion ($114B in savings and $342 increased
productivity)
• Useful new services, products, insights can be created with
these new raw materials

37. Improving the Digital Goods
• Organizations can take back control
of their information and content
management roadmaps
• Access to code, marketplaces,
module exchange with peers,
partners or supply chain
• Example: Drupal WxT project
initiated to meet Canadian Federal
web needs for bilingualism and
accessibility - now adopted by
other institutions and municipal
governments

38. Transporting the Digital Goods
• Line of Business and content management applications
carry business content
• Goods and Services are bought, sold and contracted
electronically
• Interoperable systems (ERP, WCM, BPM and Workflow,
ECM) need to let electronic content move across
business processes
• Reluctance to adopt basic Document Management
interoperability standards is a repeat of the Rail Gauge
Debates of the 1800s

39. Protecting the Digital Goods
• Digital Preservation has been neglected by the
records and information management communities –
vendors and practitioners
• Format decay, hardware obsolescence, loss or
deletion of source code
• Cannot count on vendors to take care of your digital
history, legacy and corporate memory.
• Example: Microsoft can’t find the source code or
people to rebuild PowerPoint file specifications.

40. Canada Is Lagging on Adoption, But Made
Progress in 2012
• UK Government
• 2010 Cabinet Office Memo on Open Source
• 2011 Open Source Procurement Toolkit
• 2012 Open Standards Principles Memo
• ICT Advice Note – Procurement of Open Source
• US Government
• 2009 Memo from DoD CIO on Open Source
• 2011 Lessons Learned Report- DoD
• 2012 Records Management Directive
• 2012 Contracting Guidance to Support Modular IT Development
• Military Policy on Open Source – Resource site
• France
• 2012 Memo on Open Source

41. From Information Overload to Dark Ages 2.0?
http://opensource.com/life/10/10/information-overload-dark-ages-20

42. Thank You!
Questions?
ARMA NCR - IM Days
Ottawa – November 2012
Cheryl McKinnon
Candy Strategies Inc.
Cheryl@CandyStrategies.com
www.candystrategies.com
@CherylMcKinnon