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2014‐10‐06 Open Standards Board
This was the fourth Open Standards Board, three challenges were tabled for discussion:
- Exchange of contact information - RFC6350 (vcard)
- Exchange of calendar events - RFC5545 (iCalendar)
- Public emergency alert messaging - Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) 1.2
The Board agreed:
- For exchange of contact information, to adopt RFC6350 (vcard) subject to there being no conflicting standards already adopted in Europe
- For exchange of calendar events, to adopt RFC5545 (iCalendar) subject to there being no conflicting standards already adopted in Europe
- Post meeting note
- A search was conducted post the Open Standards Board and there were no conflicting standards that had already been adopted in Europe.
- For public emergency alert messaging, to adopt CAP 1.2 subject to further work to be completed:
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- identify those areas of CAP 1.2 which refer to other standards and develop further challenge suggestions forsome with wider applicability for government
- identify those areas of CAP 1.2 which the UK would wish to define for itself as a profile in a similar manner to the previous adopters of the standard
- notify OASIS of our intention to develop a profile and secure their expertise in development
- To review a revised standard process and approve before the next Open Standards Board either face to face or by correspondence
- To have a face to face meeting in March 2015
Before each meeting attendees are asked to declare any interests relating to the topics being covered. The following interests were declared:
- Liam Maxwell noted that he was required to declare his investments to the Cabinet Secretary when he was appointed. He has no direct technology company investments.
- Matthew Dovey stated that he is a friend of the Chair of the CAP committee and confirmed that he is not involved in this area of work.
Discussion topic 1: Exchange of contact information (RFC6350 - vcard) and exchange of calendar information (RFC5545 -iCalendar)
(Nicholas Oughtibridge, Chair of the Data Standards Panel)
When exchange of contact information and exchange of calendar information are required, the data standards panel endorsed the recommendation from the challenge owner, Paul Downey of GDS. The recommendation was for the adoption of the Internet Engineering Taskforce https://www.ietf.org/ iCalendar and vCard standards for sharing calendar invitations and contact details with citizens interacting with the Government. In addition, the panel recommended the adoption of a standard way of sharing location in these standards.
The Board requested a change to the assessments to make it clear whether similar standards had been adopted in Europe, or if there were any conflicting standards currently going through the process.
The group discussed current use cases and how, if adopted, they would enable government departments to share calendar invitations and contact details with citizens interacting with the Government or needing information on government-defined events such as Bank Holidays.
The Board advised the chair to adopt vCard and iCalendar as open standards for the exchange of contact information and exchange of calendar information respectively. The chair agreed and adopted the standards profiles.
(Magnus Falk, Chair of the Technical Standards Panel)
Magnus presented the public emergency alert messaging challenge. He outlined that when an emergency occurs, members of the public need to be alerted quickly so that they can take protective action and keep themselves safe. Responder organisations such as local police forces, the Met Office and the Environment Agency currently operate a number of bespoke systems.
Magenus emphasised that it is important to standardise the format of the alert messages so that they can be diseminated over a number of different systems – thereby ensuring that as many people as possible who are at risk can be alerted to the emergency. The proposed standard, the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), allows a consistent alert message to be disseminated simultaneously over many different warning systems.
The Board discussed whether preparing a UK-only profile may limit innovation or place restrictions on the market. The Board asked for reassurance on whether the due diligence been done by suitable experts. David confirmed that OASIS has done some good pieces of work and that CAP has been adopted by three major countries.
CAP has a number of underlying standards. The Board discussed whether these should be considered separately in individual challenges to avoid unintended consequences for other use cases that may adopt a different approach, for example the use of polygons for geographic data.
The Board requested that the challenge owner should prepare a list of the underlying standards and to propose how to deal with each, for example suggesting new challenges to consider some. This should be shared with the Board for consideration.
The Board requested the challenge owner to come back with the profile to the Board with the UK country profile for CAP, (this may be completed by correspondence) and for the challenge owners to have shown that the underlying standards have been worked on and to again come back to this group.
Paul Downey agreed to work on this with the David Barnes and James Penman, the Board agreed that they would not have to own the challenges, but would ask that they find suitable challenge owners. The challenge owner noted that they will be notifying OASIS of the intention to develop a profile and will secure their expertise in development.
The Board agreed to adopt CAP 1.2, subject to agreement of the UK country profile through the Open Standards Board and completion of additional challenges on a number of CAP's underlying standards. The decision to adopt CAP 1.2 will be reviewed when this additional work is completed.
The Board noted that work was underway by Magnus and Anisha which involved looking at the Standards Hub and the process around selecting standards.
The Board agreed to review the process outside of the next meeting to ensure that the implementation of the process was running before the next Board. Magnus confirmed that user needs and previous feedback had been incorporated in the thinking, which would be shared with Board members.
Magnus and Anisha to share the suggested improvements to the standards process with Board members.
The Chair agreed the next Open Standards Board would be in March 2015; and a call for volunteer members would begin at the end of October 2014.
- Liam Maxwell, Government Digital Service (Chair)
- Adam Cooper, Bolton University
- Jeni Tennison, Open Data Institute
- John Atherton, Surevine
- John Sheridan, The National Archives
- Matthew Dovey, Jisc
- Paul Downey, Government Digital Service
Alex Brown, Griffin Brown Digital Publishing; Tim Kelsey, NHS England; Chris Ulliott, CESG; and Lee Edwards, London Borough of Redbridge sent their apologies.
- Nicholas Oughtibridge, Health and Social Care Information Centre
- Magnus Falk, Government Digital Service, Deputy Chief Technology Officer
- David Barnes, Cabinet Office
- James Penman, Met Office
- Linda Humphries, Government Digital Service
- Anisha Ahuja, Government Digital Service