Skip to main content

We always love the brand new. The shiny car straight off the lot, the new snow blower (an important investment in Baltimore last week!), or the latest phone. This desire is something that also applies to technical standards. People are excited about participating in the launch of projects and there is often competitive pressure to be atop the latest trends and developing technologies. Occasionally, innovations get all the attention while existing or stable technologies languish in staid obscurity.

That is of course until something breaks; we always care about infrastructure when it crumbles or no longer suits our needs. One approach to solving a broken or aging system is to replace it. This approach isn't without its risks or costs, however. Creating a system, testing it, and building a network of adopters is no small task, especially with emerging technologies. Another approach is to update and improve existing systems to suit the current environment.

Much like fresh paint or modest repairs to an aging, but still solid, building, refreshing and updating a standard can make a tremendous difference. Not every overhaul needs to be a massive renovation, to continue with the building analogy. Small changes and updates can radically improve a standard's ability to work with today's systems.

While there is a steady stream of new projects, we at NISO are constantly maintaining our existing portfolio of standards. Many of the more recent projects have continued since publication with maintenance and support groups that provide guidance, adoption assistance, and regular review and tweaks of specifications. Meanwhile, other, more established standards receive periodic review and reaffirmation. This is an important part of NISO's ANSI-accredited standards process.

This year, NISO is reviewing a number of important standards and considering them for revision. These include ANSI/NISO Z39.18-2005 (R2010) Scientific and Technical Reports - Preparation, Presentation, and Preservation; ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 (R2010) Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies; and ANSI/NISO Z39.29-2005 (R2010) Bibliographic References.

On January 18, Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs, provided a terrific overview of the standards being considered for revision during the monthly NISO Open teleconference. A recording of that call is available here. At present, a couple of these standards are being considered for review and potential revision. I expect that several will be put forward for revision and groups will be organized to update the standards. In the coming months, additional standards will be up for review. This is a critical activity that members should take very seriously in order for these standards to remain relevant and vital. If you are not a member, but have experience or comments about these existing standards, we would like your feedback, too. Please contact Nettie for more information or to provide your feedback.

Much like maintaining a house or a car, we need to do regular check-ups on our standards to ensure they are serving the purpose for which they were developed. If they can be improved to serve the community better, we want to know and we want to improve them. And to do that, we need the support of the entire community.

Sincerely,

Todd Carpenter

Executive Director

NISO Reports

New and Proposed Specs and Standards

OMB Releases Revision to Circular No. A-119

The federal government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has released a revision of OMB Circular No. A-119, "Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment Activities." Originally developed in 1995 and revised in 1998, the circular, the OMB explains, "established reporting requirements, and authorized the National Institute of Standards and Technology to coordinate conformity assessment activities of the agencies." This latest revision offers more detailed guidance for government agencies given technological changes, advances in open government, and policy developments.

» Go to story

First Editor's Draft of EPUB 3.1 Available for Review

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) has sent up some "trial balloons" in the release of the first Editor's Draft of EPUB 3.1. The new version of the specification, says the EPUB 3 Working Group that released it, aims to "bring EPUB 3 more in line with the Open Web Platform (OWP)," and means several controversial changes. These include a proposal that the HTML syntax of HTML5 should have required support in reading systems, necessitating a method for enriching the markup that can work in HTML and XHTML; use of the ARIA role attribute and the W3C Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module for semantics; and the dropping of support for EPUB 2 and some existing EPUB 3 features.

» Go to story

IEC Seeks Standards for Smart, Sustainable Cities

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is launching the first World Smart City online community on January 18. The ideas generated by the community will inform work at the upcoming World Smart City Forum, which is organized by the IEC in partnership with ISO and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and will take place in Singapore on July 16.

By 2050, ISO explains, around two-thirds of the world's population will live in urban areas, the kinds of places that currently suffer disorganization due to utilities being owned and controlled by various parties. Relevant standards could change that, with Kevin McKinley, Acting ISO Secretary-General noting that, "ISO standards help cities measure and improve their performance, for example with standards for city indicators, sustainable communities and city infrastructures. These standards provide best practices and harmonized solutions that can be used everywhere, and allow city planners and decision makers to benefit from global expertise."

» Go to story

W3C Plans Permissions and Obligations Working Group

W3C is planning a new working group called POE (Permissions & Obligations Expression Working Group"), because, the organization says, "the key area of permissions, obligations and licensing has not been addressed in Web standards to date." The work will address the issue of rights and permissions in online creations that combine multimedia from various sources. A related charter is currently under review, and interested parties are invited to send comments to public-ole-comment@w3.org

» Go to story

W3C Wins Emmy Award

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to Receive Emmy ® Award for Standards Work on Accessible Video Captioning and Subtitles. W3C News Release, January 5, 2016

On January 8th, the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) work on Timed Text Markup Language 1 (TTML1) was recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Technology & Engineering Emmy ® Award. W3C explains that TTML1 "is used for the purpose of authoring, transcoding and exchanging timed text information, and for delivering captions and subtitles to the Web, or more generally, the Internet," making web video more accessible to disabled viewers.

» Go to story

LYRASIS and DuraSpace Announce Intent to Merge

Duraspace news release, January 27, 2016

Not-for-profit organizations LYRASIS, which assists libraries, archives, and museums with content creation, and DuraSpace, which offers open-source repository software, have announced their intent to merge. The boards of the organizations explain that the move will bring five Community Supported Software (CSS) programs and seven hosted services together, with no changes to the delivery of the services that the organizations currently offer separately.

The decision is not yet final, and the respective boards of the organizations have now requested member and public comment as part of the due-diligence process. Interested parties are invited to contact both organizations at synergy@duraspace.org.

» Go to story

Pew Report on Data Privacy

Pew Research Center Internet, Science & Tech Report, January 14, 2016; By Lee Rainie and Maeve Duggan

When asked whether they will hand over personal data, Americans say the answer is, "it depends," says the Pew Research Center's report "Privacy and Information Sharing." Released on January 20, the document offers an in-depth look at the public's privacy awareness and practices and examines privacy concerns in scenarios related to the workplace, health, auto insurance, advertising, and more.

» Go to story

Big Data at Davos

World Economic Forum Archive

The World Economic Forum took place in Davos, Switzerland, from January 20-23, 2016. On the agenda were global, regional, and industrial topics, with big data taking the stage during the global discussions. Essays and reports published during the proceedings covered big-data topics such as balancing privacy and UX, how big data can help migrants, and "Is Small Data the New Big Data?"

» Go to story

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Honored in Error Code

Tech Times, December 21; By Jan Dizon

"The newly approved error code 451 was proposed and championed by Tim Bray, a former Google engineer and XML specification author. It was inspired by the Ray Bradbury novel, 'Fahrenheit 451,' which delved into issues of book burning in order to prevent free thought."

» Go to story

Transforming Civil Service Technology Practices

No Quick Wins blog, January 19, 2016; by Glyn R. Jones

"At the moment," says English civil servant Glyn R. Jones on his No Quick Wins blog, "it's too easy to carry on using a clunky combination of email, attached documents and corporate file shares rather than put the effort into assessing whether an online collaboration tool is fit for purpose." His ideas for "the future digital strategy for transforming government" lean heavily on the use of ontologies and can be applied to business life outside the civil service and outside Britain.

» Go to story

Hacking Technology's Boy's Club

New Republic, January 31, 2016; by Anna Wiener

Ellen Ullman is the author of the novels The Bug and By Blood; a memoir, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents; and essays including a New York Times op-ed called, "How to Be a 'Woman Programmer." The difficulties of the latter endeavor are covered in Anna Weiner's portrait of Ullman, which describes her life in the gender- and age-discriminating world that is Silicon Valley.

» Go to story

About Newsline

Publication date

ISSN 1559-2774

Calendar

Other events