On January 25th 2012, the European Commission released its proposals for significant reform of data protection rules in Europe (drafts had been leaked in late 2011). These proposals have been largely welcomed by the Information Commissioners Office , although it also recommends further thought over some of the proposals. The dramatic changes in the scale and scope of handling personal information in online retailing and social networking since the 1990′s, when current rules were implemented, is an obvious driver for change. The rise of “cloud computing” is a related factor.

What might this mean for the UK education system, especially for those concerned with educational technology?

On the whole, the answer is probably a fairly bland “not much” since we are, as a sector, pretty good at being responsible with personal data. Sector ethics, regardless of legislation, is to be institutionally concerned and careful and, providing enough time is available to adapt systems (of working and IT), this should be a relatively low impact change. There are, however, a few implications worthy of comment…

The Principle of Data Portability

Unless you know nothing about CETIS, it should come as no surprise that “data portability” caught my eye. EC Fact Sheet No. 2 says:

‘The Commission also wants to guarantee free and easy access to your personal data, making it easier for you to see what personal information is held about you by companies and public authorities, and make it easier for you to transfer your personal data between service providers – the so-called principle of “data portability”.’

Notice that this includes “public authorities”. Quite how this principle will affect practice remains to be seen but it does appear to have implications at the level of individual educational establishments and sector services such as the Learning Records Service (formerly MIAP). It is conceivable that this requirement will be satisfied by “download as HTML”, a rather lame interpretation of making it easier to transfer personal data, but I do hope not.

So: are there candidate interoperability standards? Yes, there are:

• LEAP2A for e-portfolio portability and interoperability,
• A European Standard, EN 15981, “European Learner Mobility Achievement Information” (an earlier open-access version is available as a CEN Workshop Agreement, CWA 16132)

These do not cover absolutely everything you might wish to “port” but widespread adoption as part of demonstrating compliance with a legislative “data portability” requirement is an option that is available to us.

It is also worth noting Principle 7 of “Information Principles for the UK Public Sector” (pdf) – see also my previous posting – which is entitled “Citizens and Businesses Can Access Information About Themselves” and recommends information strategies should go “… beyond the legal obligations” and  identify opportunities  “to proactively make information about citizens available to them by default”, noting that this would negate the cost of process and systems for responding to Subject Access Requests. I hope that this attitude is embraced and that the software is designed on a “give them everything” principle rather than “give them the minimum we think the law requires”. Software vendors should be thinking about this now.

There are some interesting possibilities for learner mobility if learners have a right to access and transfer fine grained achievement and progress information, especially where that is linked to well defined competence (etc) structures. Can we imagine more nomadic learners, especially those who may be early adopters of offerings from the kind of new providers that David Willetts and colleagues are angling for?

The Right to be Forgotten

This right is clearly aimed squarely at the social network hubs and online retailers (see the EC Fact Sheet No.3, pdf). It isn’t very  likely that anyone would want to have their educational experiences and achievements forgotten unless they plan to “vanish”. Indeed, it would be surprising if existing records retention requirements would be changed and the emerging trend of having secure document storage and retrieval services under user control – e.g. DARE – seems set to continue and be the way we manage this issue cost-effectively.

The right to be forgotten may be more of a threat to realising the “learning analytics” dream, even if only in adding to existing uncertainty, doubt and sometimes also fear. We need some robust and widely accepted protocols to define legally and ethically acceptable practice.

Uniformity of Legislation

The national laws that were enacted to meet the existing data protection requirements are all different and the new proposals are to have a single uniform set of rules. This makes sense from the point of view of a multi-nation business, although it will not be without critics. This is just one factor that could make a pan-European online Higher Education initiative easier to realise, whether a single provider or a collaboration. I perceive signs that people are moving closer to viable approaches to large scale online distance education using mature technologies, and possibly English as the language of instruction and assessment; looming “low-end disruptions” (see the Wikipedia article on “Disruptive Innovation“) for the academy as we know it. [Look out for an interview with Seb Schmoller which has influenced my views, due to be published soon on the JISC Observatory website.]

This is, of course, just some initial impressions on some proposals. I am sure there is a great deal that I have missed from a fairly quick scan of material from the commission and there is bound to be a lot of carping from those with businesses built around exploiting personal data so the final shape of things might be quite different.

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HP recently followed up its December plan to release its WebOS mobile platform and development tools with a proposed timeline.  The company also recently released Enyo 2.0, the webOS developer’s tool that enables users to distribute their Enyo-based webOS applications across other platforms. When it’s all said and done, WebOS will be given to the open source community under an Apache license 2.0.

Developers were hoping to have the open source version of WebOS at all at once; however HP announced that the platform and its supporting tools will be released in installments running through September. The first version, Open WebOS 1.0, will be converted to a standard Linux kernel which will make it easier to port to different hardware.

It has been a winding road for WebOS since it was first introduced by Palm in January 2009 as the successor to Palm OS. After Palm was acquired by HP in April 2010, webOS was released to new HP devices. It was practically left for dead, after product line changes and complicated corporate shuffling at the top of HP.

Its troubled path since Palm’s acquisition by HP has caused experts to doubt webOS’s outlook. Al Hilwa, program director for IDC, said it will face an uphill battle.

“The battle for mobile platforms appears to have narrowed considerably,” Hilwa said, “And it is difficult and unrealistic at this point to expect WebOS to see a recovery back into that market.” In a smartphone poll performed by Nielsen in Q2 2011, webOS only had a 2 percent market share in the U.S. compared to 39 percent for Android and 28 percent that for Apple iOS.

However, Hilwa believes that the flexibility of webOS may help the platform become relevant in the future.

“It is quite possible that hardware vendors in the embedded space can take WebOS up for appropriate projects,” Hilwa said, in an email message. “Also, there are parts of WebOS, such as the development framework, that may be used independently.”

This month, HP expects to release and intended project governance model, QT WebKit extensions, JavaScript core, and UI Enyo widgets. In March, HP is set to release graphics extensions, LevelDB, USB extensions. An update for Enyo (2.1), the release of Ares 2.0, and Node services are expected for April. July sets up the ground for September with the release of a system manager dubbed, Luna, a system manager bus, core applications, and another update of Enyo (2.2). The Open webOS beta will be released in August, the company said. – Ryan Punzalan

Writing these stories so far on community members has been a great experience and I received a lot of positive feedback. The stories continue with the fourth story in the BizTalk Community Series that brings active BizTalk community members to the foreground. The story today is on Abhijit Mahato. He is a Microsoft Community Contributor since 2011, a blogger and an active BizTalk forum member.

Abhijit is married to his lovely wife Laxmi, and they are expecting their first child in March 2012. His family lives in Kolkata, also known as “The City of Joy, City of Palaces, the Cultural capital of India”, located in the eastern part of India.

Abhijit currently works as a Senior BizTalk Consultant at Capgemini, one of the world’s largest IT Services, Consulting and Outsourcing companies with over 115,000 people operating in 40 countries. His job involves working with customers on integration projects especially using BizTalk Server, WCF (.Net) and SQL Server (SSIS). He loves to design, architect, and develop BizTalk Solution. Also he likes to install and configure BizTalk Server.

He had his first integration project using BizTalk Server 2004 in the year 2005. His senior project manager and customer highly appreciated his work and effort. This motivated him to do more integration projects. Since then Abhijit has worked on many large and complex integration projects with BizTalk.

Abhijit feels that the best thing about working in any integration project is learning BizTalk (Integration product) and also the opportunity to learn other technologies like SAP, EDI, MS CRM and so on. What he likes the most about BizTalk Server product and I quote is:

“It is currently one of the most mature, reliable and stable integration server in the industry.”

Furthermore he describes the product in the following manner:

“It has got a huge number of “out of the box” adapters; and there is a long list of other features like message persistence, recovery in case of failure in communication, correlation, long running transactions, monitoring of business processes, complex mapping, and the ESB. Furthermore BizTalk contains a number of tools like BRE, BAM, SSO, BizTalk Admin console and so on enhancing productivity.”

Finally Abhijit is very excited about Microsoft’s recent announcement of the forthcoming release of BizTalk Server 2010 R2, and is looking forward to exploring and working with this new release.

In his spare time, Abhijit loves to spend time with his family and friends, take participation in various quiz competitions and enjoy solving mathematical and logical puzzles. Besides that he loves reading technical blogs on new Microsoft technologies like Windows AppFabric,Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Azure. Finally he also spends time in contributing to MSDN BizTalk forums and write blogs posts about BizTalk issues and related topics.

Abhijit would like to thank people for reading his posts and appreciates if they can also provide feedback. This will keep him motivated to continue to contribute. He feels this will also improve the online BizTalk community experience for others.  

A final quote from Abhijit:

“I believe that one doesn’t ever get tired until he makes the last attempt and doesn’t ever make the last attempt until he is successful.”

I would like to thank Abhijit for his contributions to the community and the time he took to have a chat with me.

Here at Appian, we are gearing up for our biggest global user conference yet.  This is the 4th Appian World conference, and the first to feature a multiple tracks that cater to the diverse and growing audience expected to attend this April.

For Appian World 2012, we will be featuring a BPM Beginner, Appian Developer, and Business track featuring.  Each track will feature a variety of customer case studies, 3rd party analyst / BPM expert perspectives, and learning sessions to ensure success in your BPM endeavors.

In addition, we have added a 4th training day for those attendees wishing to get even more training on aspects of the Appian product.

For a full break-down of the agenda, please visit our Appian World 2012 agenda page.

We look forward to seeing many familiar and new faces this year.  Be sure to register early, registration is free but seating is limited.

Malcolm Ross

Director Product Management

I enjoyed Adam Deane’s recent post on “BPM: Priorities.” He points out how limited typical BPM systems are in dealing with the complexities of how work actually gets done based on the often chaotic nature of how business and task priorities constantly change. In my opinion, this is where Social BPM capabilities become so critical.

The problem is, most BPM software vendors (and frankly, many industry pundits) have a limited view of what Social BPM really is. They relegate it to collaborative process design – making it easier for a handful of pre-designated people to work together in developing a process diagram. This is, at best, a single. The grand-slam homerun happens when Social BPM is applied to real-time collaborations across all employees (and customers) while business processes are being executed.

Let’s say you work in customer support for a large insurance firm. A customer has logged a trouble ticket for a rather mundane issue, and you have received a task with an appropriately moderate priority level. Let’s also say that, unbeknownst to you, a sales rep is sitting in a meeting with that customer discussing a large up-sell opportunity. While the support issue is nothing major, it is sticking in the customer’s craw and jeopardizing the deal. Through a Social BPM activity stream, the rep can do a search for the customer name, pull up all info related to that customer (including the trouble ticket event) and instantly post a comment about the sudden and unexpected urgency to resolve it. You instantly see the comment, take care of the mundane issue, and before the rep leaves the meeting, the problem is fixed.

If you’re using Appian, all of that took place via a single unified interface that’s as easy to use as Facebook. Unlike Facebook, however, Appian unites complex back-end enterprise systems, such as those used across your support and sales departments, and allows you to read data from and take action on those various systems from that single interface.

Social BPM isn’t limited to internal system and human events, either. Here’s another example:

You work for a property management company in Chicago. You have set up your Appian Social BPM feed to automatically track and post Twitter tweets containing the word “relocation.” A post appears in your Appian interface that says, “About to announce HQ relocation to Chicago. Start the apartment hunting!” You check the poster’s profile and see that she works for ACME, Inc.

ACME hasn’t issued their corporate press release on the HQ move yet, so your sales team has an opportunity to scoop competitors. Still in the Appian interface, you launch a case called “Jump on this Chicago relocation opportunity,” and add the comment “We have lots of Chicago apartments. Find ACME’s HR contact and offer some incentives.” This case goes immediately into process, gets assigned to your Chicago rep, and you’re off to the races.

These are just two examples. Once you get your head around the real potential for run-time Social BPM, the possibilities are virtually unlimited.

Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications

U.S. Commerce Association Honors the Achievement
NEW YORK, NY,  January 30, 2012—SOA Software has been selected for the 2011 Los Angeles Award in the Merchandising & Marketing category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).

The USCA Award Program recognizes outstanding enterprises throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their enterprise category. These companies enhance the positive image of business through service to their customers and region.

“Receiving the 2011 Marketing Award is an honor and very special,” said Roberto Medrano, executive vice president of marketing. “It builds on our recognition from top analysts for our innovative products and from tier one industry organizations for our forward thinking marketing management.”

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2011 USCA Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

About U.S. Commerce Association (USCA)

U.S. Commerce Association (USCA) is a New York City based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The purpose of USCA is to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising.

The USCA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to be an advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.
URL: http://www.uscaaward.com

About SOA Software

SOA Software is a leading provider of unified SOA governance, cloud and enterprise API Management products that enable organizations to plan, build, and run enterprise services and open APIs.  The world’s largest companies including Bank of America, Pfizer, and Verizon use SOA Software solutions to transform their business. http://www.soa.com

Strategic Move Driven by Global SOA Governance Paradigm
Los Angeles, CA. – January 17, 2012 – SOA Software, a leading provider of SOA governance, cloud and enterprise API Management products, is extending its presence to the Middle East region, the company announced today.  The strategic move serves a growing demand for SOA governance automation solutions that span global trade networks.  Tony Rolston, Managing Director, MEA, will manage the Middle East operations.

“We’re experiencing a remarkable evolution in cloud-based computing,” said Paul Gigg, President and CEO, SOA Software.  “As companies stretch service-oriented architectures across the globe, we are increasingly called upon to provide governance automation with trading partners and international business units.  The Middle East, including such countries as Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, is a natural extension of this trend for us.”

“The Middle East is an area of tremendous potential for SOA Software,” said Rolston.  “Economies are growing as businesses become more and more connected globally. We’re seeing many opportunities to help corporations effect automated SOA governance. Our newly expanded management team includes seasoned professionals with over 10 years experience working in this field in the Middle East so we are fully conversant with the business challenges and customers are already requesting SOA Software as their Governance platform of choice.” 

About SOA Software

SOA Software is a leading provider of unified SOA governance, cloud and enterprise API Management products that enable organizations to plan, build, and run enterprise services and open APIs.  The world’s largest companies including Bank of America, Pfizer, and Verizon use SOA Software solutions to transform their business.  For more information, please visit http://www.soa.com.

As reported in Federal Computer Week, a January 19 report from the Defense Business Board (DBB) states that “pursuing IT efficiencies could save DoD between 25 and 50 percent on annual expenditures, while also improving mission effectiveness and achieving return on investment even ahead of schedule.”

The report outlines a four-step approach of “normalizing, standardizing and rationalizing applications; rationalizing and consolidating data centers; rationalizing data and security; and then migrating appropriate components to the cloud.” The DBB urged the department to act decisively in these areas, warning that the consequences could otherwise be disastrous.

According to the report, support for cloud computing is already strong, and validated, across the DoD: “Interviews indicate wide support across DoD for [data center consolidation and cloud]. Cost savings and efficiency benefits are widely understood; budget imperatives create [an] environment for making major changes; early DoD initiatives [are] already showing positive results.”

But tentative steps will not be sufficient, with the DBB stating, “independent and uncoordinated actions will increase barriers to coordination and information sharing. Costs will skyrocket and service levels will decrease given need to maintain legacy systems; future rationalization will be harder and more expensive. Security will fall further behind, leaving entire IT network increasingly vulnerable.”

Appian is committed to helping government agencies embrace the cloud. Medhat Galal, Appian’s VP of Enablement, is featured in the January issue of Government Executive answering the five most nagging questions about how the cloud can improve efficiency while reducing expenses.

Read the article, then contact us to learn how we can help your agency tap the power of Cloud BPM.

-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications