Results of voting on ECF 3.0

["John M. Greacen" <john@greacen.net>]

I am delighted to report that the Technical Committee’s voting members have overwhelmingly approved ECF 3.0, its executive summary, and the signature and messaging profiles as committee drafts for recommendation to the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee as a proposed standard.  Congratulations to all of us for bringing ECF 3.0 to this stage of maturity.  Many of us who have labored for almost six years on this project doubted at many junctures that this day would ever arrive.  I particularly wish to thank Eric Tingom, Jim Cabral and his colleagues at MTG, and Scott Came for their drafting efforts which gave the concepts and ideas of the TC members concrete embodiment and amplified them into a complete specification and associated artifacts.

 

There were three negative votes.  All three expressed the view that ECF 3.0 is premature for adoption as a national standard.  I personally believe that all members of the TC agree that testing is required before ECF 3.0 is ready for prime time.  The Joint Tech Committee’s process also recognizes this.  We are recommending that the Joint Tech Committee approve ECF 3.0 as a “proposed standard” for the purpose of widespread review and testing of the specification in operational settings.  The Joint Tech Committee’s process calls for a second level of approval – as a “recommended standard” – once that testing has been done, the inevitable modifications that such testing will disclose have been made, and the modified specification has been shown to support interoperable implementations.  In the executive summary, we explicitly request the Joint Tech Committee’s assistance in conducting the necessary implementation and interoperability tests.  

 

Consequently, although their votes will continue to be recorded as “no”s, I personally choose to interpret the statements of the three dissenters as supporting the TC’s approval of ECF 3.0 as a committee draft ready for implementation and interoperability testing, which was the question before the TC.

 

John M. Greacen

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