I wish I’d been in Washington today, to attend the lauch of our new
Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems. I’m proud having been involved in creating this second roadmap aimed at government leaders and others about government use of IT. This new roadmap introduces the wonderful term openization, and is all about open IT ecosystems, open standards, open source, and open government.
As a member of the Open ePolicy Group, I’d like to thank Jeff Kaplan and staff at The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, IBM Corporation and Oracle for supporting this important work.
New York Times reports about the roadmap: “Plan by 13 Nations Urges Open Technology Standards” (via Bob Sutor and other IBMers). Also International Herald Tribune, Computerworld, Public CIO, Infoworld, Red Herring, and more reports. And yes, it was also Slashdotted.
Danish ComputerWorld reports this as a “a global Danish outcry for open standards”.
For the Danish context, I need to make one thing clear, and that is that the Roadmap is not an official Danish outcry. The report clearly states that “All members of the Open ePolicy Group participated in their individual capacity. The ROADMAP FOR OPEN ICT ECOSYSTEMS does not necessarily represent the ofï¬cial views of any government, corporation or institution with which members might be associated.” Hence, I participate in the Open ePolicy Group as myself, not as a Danish government official. And since I’m soon no longer a Danish government official, I can’t speak for the Danish government.
Personally, I agree to everything the roadmap says. Again, the central keyword is openization, a concept I think we invented at the workshop in Redwood City. Openness is not a matter of either-or, 0 or 1, yes or no. It’s a process, where ecosystems, technologies and standards become more and more open.
Update: The launch event at the World Bank, Evolving to Open ICT Ecosystems, is now available online. See the video.
More references:
– Earth Times: Adopt open-information technologies, international experts tell nations
– Corante: 13-Nation Army for Open Standards
– Consortiuminfo.org Standards Blog: Standards Numerology:The Magic Number is 13
3 Comments.
Interesting news! I am in Washington for the next four months, but I didn’t know about the event. John, you are a true leader in openness and you will be missed in the Danish government! When you have more time, you should visit me here in DC – the EA-capital of the world!
John,
Thanks for highlighting the launch of the Roadmap. The initial media coverage was wonderful. And now we have the task of getting the Roadmap out to the world, and see how it is used.
While the word “openization” did not end up in the final version of the Roadmap, I think it is the right way to think about openness in an ICT ecosystem.
Some objected to use of “openization” because it is a “made up” word and sounds awkward. Both are true, for the moment anyway. Any new word or concept sounds strange at first. But we can define it clearly, and it does accurately describe a key point we try to make in the Roadmap.
Openization means: the process of increasing the capacity of an ecosystem to incorporate and sustain openness.
And one key goal of the Roadmap is to help people “openize” or increase that capacity.
There are other ways to say it; most take more words to precisely capture this idea. So, why not “openization”?
Jeff,
I hate to correct you (yeah right! 🙂 but openization is actually still in the roadmap (maturity model). And hence in Google. So, let’s promote openization!