RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Implementation Reports

["Winters, Roger" <Roger.Winters@METROKC.GOV>]

Title: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Implementation Reports

I believe we agreed we want to allow vendors who use Legal XML specifications to be able to say something positive about themselves as a result. Vendors are now saying they "use" or "comply with" or "participate in" our specifications; they may be as uncertain with how to describe this as we are.

I believe our intent is to exchange the ability to claim a relationship to the TC's standards for the vendor's sharing information about their experience in using the standards.

John Greacen is working on language for the TC to consider. In the meantime, here are some thoughts:

The conditions a vendor must meet in order to say their implementation somehow "follows Legal XML specifications" would be:

        1) must use at least one of the DTDs in their implementation in a clearly describable way;

        2) must format any extensions in ways described in the specification(s);

        3) must send the Legal XML Electronic Court Records Technical Committee a report, explaining how the DTD is being used, describing the what and why of the vendor's extensions, and providing any other feedback to the TC that help in developing future specifications; and

        4) wait until the TC has acknowledged the vendor has done what was asked, at which point the TC will say that the vendor may then say its implementation(s) is(are) "               "  in relation to Legal XML ECFTC specifications.

The TC, in recognition of this cooperation, would acknowledge that the vendor may represent their implementations as "based on" (or some other term) the Legal XML Electronic Court Filing TC's Proposed Standard(s). (Perhaps the TC would want the vendor to share how they want to describe their relationship to the standards, in hopes of heading off inappropriate claims, etc.)

The TC would need to provide a general but simple format for vendor reporting; perhaps a list of questions like these would do --

        Who are you?
]       What did you implement, for whom, when, and where?
        How did you use the DTD(s)?
        How did you extend it (them)?
        Why?
        What results did you get?
        What unresolved problems remain?
        What recommendations do you have on how to build better specifications?

Shared information would be used only in helping the TC to improve existing or develop future specifications. The TC might need to describe how it would respect and protect the vendor's intellectual property rights. I hope these thoughts help give this proposal a bit more flesh.

Roger Winters
Electronic Court Records Manager
King County
Department of Judicial Administration
516 Third Avenue, E-609 MS: KCC-JA-0609
Seattle, Washington 98104
V: (206) 296-7838 F: (206) 296-0906
roger.winters@metrokc.gov
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Shane.Durham@lexisnexis.com [mailto:Shane.Durham@lexisnexis.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 10:02 AM
To: legalxml-courtfiling@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [legalxml-courtfiling] Implementation Reports

>>  Dallas writes:
Also, for a report to be a recognized "report" or "addendum" the
modifications must be presented to the TC and reviewed to insure that the
intent has not extended the standard into areas that we do not agree with.
<<

I concur that the implementor's report needs to be reviewed by LegalXML.

However, I don't think that LegalXML should assign some kind of explicit
'approved' or 'rejected' status, or assign some grade to each
implementation.  The LegalXML standard is far too ambiguous for our group to
say that implementor 'A' is doing it the right way and implementor 'B' is
doing it the wrong way.

I think it would be appropriate, for the group, as a whole, to post the
comments generated by the implementation report's review.  The implementor
and LegalXML should continue to exchange comments, until they have satisfied
each other's curiosity (or patience!).

The implementor's report and all comments should be made available to the
public.  In that way, LegalXML and the implementor can publicly indicate
where the implementation might "severely differ" from an "anticipated" use
of the standard. (Still, that would not mean the implementation is 'wrong'.)

At that point, LegalXML can say that the report-and-review process is done.

Having implemented the LegalXML CourtFiling, and/or Document, and/or
QueryResponse standard, and participated in this official report-and-review
process (including a posted version of the implementor's DTD/Schema), I
beleive an implementor should be able to claim (LegaXML should post) that
they are "a recognized implementation of LegalXML
CourtFiling/Document/QueryResponse, as defined by LegalXML addendum document
yadda-yadda....".

All in all, I would expect the process to be an easy one for an implementor
to follow. Simply, show us what you did with LegalXML - we'll tell you what
we think about it.  Everyone gets to see our conversation.  And.. that's it.
- Shane