Four Stars of Open Standards

I’m writing this at UKGovCamp, a wonderful unconference. This post constitutes notes, which I will flesh out and polish later.

I’m in a session on open standards in government, convened by my good friend Terence Eden, who is the Open Standards Lead at Government Digital Service, part of the United Kingdom government’s Cabinet Office.

Inspired by Tim Berners-Lee’s “Five Stars of Open Data“, I’ve drafted “Four Stars of Open Standards”.

These are:

1. Publish your content consistently
2. Publish your content using a shared standard
3. Publish your content using an open standard
4. Publish your content using the best open standard

Bonus points for:

• making clear which standard you use
• publishing your content under an open licence
• contributing your experience to the development of the standard.

Point one, if you like is about having your own local standard — if you publish three related data sets for instance, be consistent between them.

Point two could simply mean agreeing a common standard with other items your organisation, neighbouring local authorities, or suchlike.

In points three and four, I’ve taken “open” to be the term used in the “Open Definition“:

Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose (subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness).

Further reading:

• Newvember – New Job!

by Terence Eden (on his appointment to the Open Standards Lead role)

• What’s Up With Open Standards?

by Lawrence Greenwood and Terence Eden

• How I Got The UK Government To Adopt ODF by Terence Eden

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