« December 12, 2003 | Main | December 16, 2003 »
December 15, 2003
Atom and the Power of the Human Voice
Sam Ruby has posted slides for Atom (hint: the slide are the link at the very top). Atom is a new syndication specification that competes with RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. Yikes! Still, I think Sam makes a good case why Atom is better. Robert Scoble asks
I still wonder what would happen if Microsoft wrote those same slides? Imagine we take Atom's spec and then demonstrate 20 places we could improve Atom as justification for coming up with a new spec? Where does it end? I don't know. But, how is this not "embrace and extend" only this time Microsoft isn't behind it.From The Scobleizer Weblog
Referenced Mon Dec 15 2003 15:19:16 GMT-0700
This is a good question and I have a theory. My theory is that because Sam is a real human, speaking with a real voice, we don't see it as an attempt by IBM to shove something down our throats for their own good. Rather we see it as a thoughtful attempt by a respected member of the community, who happens to work for IBM, to make improvements.
That said, I'm undecided. While I can clearly see the technical benefits to Atom, organizations like the Utah Legislature are just taking the first baby steps to using RSS and things like this scare them off. I don't want them scared off; I want to see RSS feeds for everything they do.
Sure, with the right content management tools, generating syndication feeds in multiple flavors isn't a big deal. I'll let you in on a little secret: a lot of the RSS feeds you see aren't generated by flexible content management systems. Others, like the feed for this blog are generated by software from organizations that have a horse in the race.
03:28 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Most Overlooked Burning Issue of the Year
John Gotze says that digital identity should have won the award for "Most Overlooked Burning Issue of the Year" in 2003. Denmark is very progressive in eGovernment and facing issues that most governments won't see for a few years, so its a good idea for any government CIO to follow what Denmark does closely and anticipate the problems Denmark faces as they blaze the way.
One of Denmark's initiatives for 2003 was a nationwide digital signature program. Says John:
The certificates (OCES) are politically mandated for future online public services, but the banks and other players already have own established solutions and are reluctant to move on to OCES, so we're clearly not done yet, if anyone thought that was the case. The challenge is that digital identity management is about so much more than digital signatures.From Gotzeblogged
Referenced Mon Dec 15 2003 09:24:29 GMT-0700
Another example of where digital identity is proving to be an issue is in Denmark's aggressive roll-out of Web services. A case study on Loosely Coupled talks about how Web services lead to digital identity:
Denmark's Immigration Service, which has embarked on a major web services initiative to provide information to other Danish government departments and ultimately the general public, fears that it faces growing costs to manage user access privileges unless it can automate the management of multiple identities. Its ability to do so depends partly on how quickly standards are ratified and, in turn, how fast its identity management software supplier can absorb the standards in its own applications.From Information access waits on ID standards
Referenced Mon Dec 15 2003 09:27:37 GMT-0700
I think we're going to see more and more of this as organizations understand that aligning IT with business means that we have to stop worrying about controlling access to networks and servers and start worrying about access control for documents, records, and other fine-grained resources.