REPLY Who wants to share models (SD6859)

[SDMAIL Chip Hines]

Posted by  "Chip Hines" <hines.chip at gmail.com>

Good points.  Regarding the mechanism of exchanges, I was involved with 
efforts to create "exchange standards" in the emergency management and 
associated communities, and we had much the same issues.  I think that 
it turns out to be advantageous to everyone to have the ability to 
exchange information, and when vendors realize this many more 
opportunities open up to them - they can sell their product based on how 
well it meets the users needs, and as their customers get to know and 
love their product, they wont have to leave it to use a model developed 
elsewhere.

Everybody wins, but its difficult changing the paradigm (now where have 
I heard that before?)  The approach that was worked out was 
collaborative, inclusive, rapid (at least as far as standards making 
processes go), and effective.  Essentially the standards were about the 
information that needed to be shared between systems.  Developers only 
needed to develop the translation of information in the standard to 
their internal structures, and implement the ability to send and 
receive.  THe good news from their perspective was that they only needed 
to do this once, and their software would be able to use the products of 
any other compliant system. Users would benefit from the information (or 
model) and use it in the format/software that was most familiar to them.

I suspect that it would be good for the whole community to be able to 
seamlessly exchange models, and would really help the discipline and the 
end users move forward.  Developing these standards isnt easy though.  
The process was interesting and involved iterative consensus building on 
the standard itself then the elements of the standard, using XML.  The 
standards were born with the acronym Emergency Data eXchange Language, 
but we soon came to see that this wasnt accurate, but the more correct 
version - Emergency Messaging eXchange Standards (EMXS) never really 
replaced it.  The draft, facilitated standards were then submitted to an 
international standards body (OASIS) and benefitted from the formal 
standards making and "certification" process.

It was a great example of the federal government facilitating, but not 
owning a process that involved users, vendors, government and standards 
organizations to produce truely effective and implemented standards. 
Unfortunately, in these days of budget issues and politics, its future 
is uncertain.

Id be happy to share the experiences we've had if anyone is interested. 

With regard to the question of whether people want to exchange models, 
my guess is that they would, but there are a lot of barriers to doing so 
that make it hard to commit to.  This also says a lot for those who do 
share already.

chip
Posted by  "Chip Hines" <hines.chip at gmail.com>
posting date  Thu, 3 Apr 2008 09:20:43 -0400