An Article on Legal Constraints in US, A Question about Issues

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Title: An Article on Legal Constraints in US, A Question about Is

Hi Folks,

Since I keep an eye on Healthcare issues, I noticed this article today. One of my own conclusions as I have researched this domain off and on over the last 3 years has been the lack of global standards for IT other than the broadest ones covered in ISO 11179, and some topic-specific issues. I would be interested to hear whether there are significant and similar barriers in Europe and Asia, as if localization wasn't difficult enough on its own, especially with different character sets. However, as with many IT issues, the legal aspects, and the IPR aspects also need to be addressed. So, here's the article:

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=29100518

And, here's the question:

Should we consider establishing subcommittees early in the TC process?

The question relates to the specificity of gathering requirements for legal issues specifically. As a member of the Web Services for Remote Portlets TC, I can vouch for the fact that there just isn't enough warm bodies working on behalf of corporate members to take on any significant work outside the specific purview of our scope, and our experience with relying on other TCs to produce their specs in a timely way to aid in our ongoing work has been somewhat disappointing, though neither unexpected, nor particularly troubling yet. For instance,  we have had to wait for a year for WSS to reach its milestone for producing its first suite of specifications, we now face the task of imlementing those standards and gathering feedback from those implementations. This then must be factored into WSRP 2.0 if we can, though, in fact, we may not have enough feedback during the timeframe we have established for developing WSRP v2.0. I don't know, obviously, so I can't point out whether, in fact, this is a large-enough concern to warrant being included in the ihc work. However, uptake of standards, wherever they are produced is something that needs to be addressed, so I think that an IHC Legal SC would be a good idea.

If we are to liaise with other TCs to produce specifications needed in this domain, we need to be as specific as we can be to avoid tasking others to survey a field for specific issues before beginning the work of writing standards to bridge those issues.

BTW, Legal is just one particular domain. For an exercise in how complex these issues will be, consider how many different specs there are for defining what a "person" or "address" is.

Just thought I would pass this little reminder along.

Regards,

Rex Brooks

P.S. I am using the long form of my signature here this once so those of you joining in this initial period can get an idea of what my interests are. I will add my membership in this TC once I am sure that I fit into the work here.

-- 

Rex Brooks
President, Stabourne Communications Design
Executive Director, Humanmarkup.org, Inc.
Co-Chair, Secretary, OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee
Co-Chair OASIS Human Physical Characteristics Description Markup Language Subcommittee
Member, OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets Technical Committee
Member,  OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets-Primer Subcommittee
Member OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee
Co-Chair Emergency Management Notification Methods and Messages Subcommittee
Member, OASIS Emergency Management Geospatial Information Services Subcomittee
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