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2015‐11‐13 Open Standards Board
The board met to consider:
- recommendations on four proposals:
- exchange of property/place information
- exchange of location point information
- multi agency incident transfer
- publishing vacancies online
- the adoption of a fast track process for selecting open standards in some circumstances
The board agreed that the:
- Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) should not be adopted as an open standard. Instead, the Board proposed the development of an open register of addressable locations to meet the user need.
- The European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 (ETRS89) must be used as mandated by the INSPIRE directive. For the rest of the world the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) must be adopted. The Board also agreed that other coordinate standards may be used, in addition to WGS 84/ETRS89, where they more readily suit the user need, e.g. greater accuracy required for precision engineering decisions.
- The Multi Agency Incident Transfer (MAIT) proposal should be adopted subject to clarification for the board of the suitability of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License to be applied to XML schema.
- The standard identified publishing vacancies online cannot be considered for adoption until the board has further clarification on several points relating to the proposal.
- The board shall discuss the fast track process for open standards by audio conference in the second week of December paper.
The board was invited to declare any interests; none were raised.
The chair of the data panel advised that this proposal had not been recommended by the panel as an open standard because the proposal is not suitable to meet all the needs of persons without a Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) licence. Without a PSMA license, there is no mechanism to translate the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) identifier to any other representation of the property or place.
A member brought to the attention of the board that a second, separate and incompatible system of UPRN exists, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), for the energy performance certificate (EPC) register. The chair advised the Board that he would take up the matter of the EPC UPRN with the DCLG.
The board agreed that it was not possible to implement this proposal without there first being an open registry that allowed the translation of UPRNs. The board agreed that an open register of property/place locations is an important requirement with a well defined user need.
All board members to forward their suggestions by 27 November as to how the requirement for an open register for addressing can be met.
Paul Downey to take forward a discovery project relating to the creation of an open register for addressing.
The chair to take up the matter of the EPC UPRN with the DCLG. Secretariat to draft a letter.
The board recommended that a combination of two standards expressed in the proposal is the most appropriate approach to meet the user need and that the coordinate reference system (CRS) must be defined when publishing data.
For the geographical scope of the European Terrestrial Reference System 19891 (ETRS89), ETRS89 must be used. However, for many use cases where the effect of continental drift is not considered significant the United States Government Department of Defense (DoD) World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) is functionally equivalent to ETRS89. Therefore, for the rest of the world, WGS 84 must be used.
The board recommended that other standards may be used where appropriate, for example when greater accuracy is required in a local survey by engineers.
The board notes that it is possible to map other coordinate systems to the standards chosen.
The standards profile should be adjusted to indicate that in some circumstances, other standards may be used eg for accuracy in engineering use cases.
The data panel chair explained that this standard is an electronic replacement for the existing method of passing detail of incidents between emergency responders by phone and fax. The board was advised that the schema proposed for adoption is made available through British Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (British APCO) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives license.
The data panel chair advised that questions raised on intellectual property rights had been answered and that advice had been taken confirming that there was no requirement for notification to the European Commission.
The board considered the suitability of the license to be applied to the XML schema. There was concern that derivatives may include the schema extensions described in the MAIT 0.2.2 draft.
The chair to approach B-APCO to confirm the compatibility of their intentions with the terms of the licence. Wording of question for B-APCO to be of supplied by the board by 27 November 2015.
The chair of the data panel presented the evaluation of the proposal and the panel’s decision to advise the Board to adopt schema.org/JobPosting as a recommended standard. An expected outcome of the standard’s structured data was explained. It allows job postings to be more widely disseminated and re-used without the need for bespoke web page scrapers. This would enable government departments to broaden the range of candidates for vacancies and enable citizens to have better access to job postings.
While the board appreciated that the adoption of the standard would have benefits, issues were raised about:
- the openness of schema.org’s processes
- the lack of alternative standards having been considered
- the need to verify that the fields in the schema.org specification are likely to be useful in practice, for example in Universal Jobmatch.
It was confirmed that the challenge owner had involved officials from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in the development of the proposal.
The chair to write to the schema.org steering group and request that they open their processes to align with the assessment questions used in the Standards Hub. The Board and challenge owner to assist with the wording of this letter.
Challenge owner to confirm which other standards have been considered and explain to the Board the reasons for them being rejected from this proposal.
The challenge owner to confirm that the fields in schema.org JobPosting are useful in practice by confirming the schema is in line with the requirements of Universal Jobmatch by engaging the relevant people in DWP.
The fast track process was presented to the board. The implementation of a fast track process had been agreed by the Minister for the Cabinet Office prior to the last election. The purpose of the fast track process is to improve coherence with other governments and to increase the rate of standards selection.
Implementing the fast track process would depend on all of the following criteria being met:
- either an EU member state having assessed and approved the standard,
- or the EU Multi Stakeholder Platform (MSP) on ICT standardisation having assessed and approved the standard
- a clear user need for the standards exists
- the standard appears to meet the UK Government definition of an open standard
The fast track process differs from the full selection process by removing the suggestion and response stages and moving directly to the proposal stage.
Secretariat to arrange a conference call with board members to take place by the third week in December 2015 to discuss the process, criteria and questions in more detail.
For next meeting questions to be raised should be emailed to the chair in the week before the meeting. Note that the board members may also comment publicly through the Standards Hub during the proposal stage.
Members requested that papers be sent out two weeks before the Board meets.
The next meeting is planned to be in April 2016.
- Liam Maxwell GDS (chair)
- Adrian Hepworth, Atos
- Dan Appelquist, Telefonica
- Chris Francis, SAP
- Paul Downey, GDS
- Jeni Tennison, ODI (via phone)
- Adam Cooper, CETIS (via phone)
- James Findlay (via phone)
- Nicholas Oughtibridge, HSCIC
- Ian Churchill, GDS
- Lawrence Greenwood, GDS
- John Sheridan, The National Archives
- Matthew Dovey, Jisc
- Exchange of property / place address information
- Exchange of location point information
- Multi agency incident transfer
- Publishing vacancies online