Chris:
A few comments:
Overall, excellent job – now I can relax and enjoy the rest of my holiday ;-)
I have minor editorial niggles (mainly around “standards language” and how we diagram the various models) but they really can be dealt with once the TC has had a first round and agreed the scope and broad content of the draft.
Regarding the conformance criteria – I suppose this will be an early decision point for the TC. Bluntly put, do we want the Primer to be a specification/standard, with criteria against which implementations are judged? Or an early-out-the-gate deliverable that gets the debate going and our work on people’s radar?
It’s not an either/or question, and there are many other considerations. John is right in stating that the priority is to have a milestone for the March TC meeting to approve “something” that serves as an anchor for further discussions. Only if and when the document is fully approved through the full “standards track cycle” would the exact inclusion and nature of any conformance clauses come to be relevant and important.
Bottom line: we shouldn’t worry overly at this stage about whether conformance criteria stay in or go out (or indeed whether any particular sections stays in or goes out) as long as we can approve some initial draft covering the overall view. Nothing obliges the TC to approve that Primer as a final deliverable.
If we decide at a later stage that the Primer is “only” an informative doc, then we move the conformance section and possibly other bits in a standards-track deliverable and drive that forward to completion with those parts in.
Pro memoria, we will need sections on “relationships with other work” and methodology in any standards-track deliverable. When we have a reasonably stable draft, I would suggest to the TC that we ask for opinion and feedback from a couple of other relevant TCs and maybe even other standards bodies: that should be part of the proselytism in any case.
Just a few replies to the comments/questions to me and that you highlighted in your text:
(page 18) “f) MUST use these conformance criteria suitably transposed to the specific implementation. [Peter – not sure what this one means?]” – what I intended here in my original drafting was: parts of the Framework may require a conformant agency to develop certain products of its own; as such, these products should also contain conformance criteria, using the Framework’s criteria as the basis but adapted/re-worded to apply to the agency’s specific own policy products. Probably a long-winded way of saying mutatis mutandis. ;-)
(page 21) I think there are two discussions and diagrams to be covered here: one regards a mapping of the stakeholder types involved in the Framework (using, I have suggested, Ian Alexander’s “Onion Model” as a possible visually suitable approach); the other is the modelling of the collaborations between stakeholders, as Nig’s diagram starts to articulate. They both need to be worked on in detail and are central to building the governance model and indeed the “ecosystem view” that you propose for Appendix 4 – I also think that this it is a key differentiator of our work.
(page 23) I agree that the franchise model diagram needs substantial clean-up. The model itself is fine – in discussions I have held with a couple of gov agencies, the part that they “get” immediately is the wholesale/retail/franchise metaphor – that what retailers offer and how they present their wares is customer-driven; while wholesalers are organised and optimised around the needs of producers, suppliers and franchises. Nig’s diagram on p 24 goes a fair way to doing this.
Appendix 5 – I think we can agree a restricted glossary of key terms fairly quickly for this Primer. As the TC Charter specifically calls for a reference model, I do think that the full terminology and relationships model should be in a distinct deliverable and that will be my priority action in March.
I’ll reply separately to other members’ comments
Cheers,
Peter
Peter F Brown
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