November 13, 2000 New Thinking:
Common standards
Subject Classification
Reader Feedback
Subscribing
Unsubscribing
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
Books by
Gerry McGovern
Content Critical
Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content
The Web
Content
Style Guide
The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers
November 13, 2000
Common standards
By Gerry McGovern
The recent US Presidential election is the perfect argument for the need for common standards. The US voting system is not really a system but a mix ‘n’ match of the archaic and the modern.
According to the New York Times, “Some people vote by computer touch-screen. Others use machines designed in 1892. Still others, like voters in Palm Beach County, Fla., use punch cards and 1960's tabulating machines that are no longer made. Some ballots are the size of bedsheets or run for pages.”
The US voting ‘system’ is crying out for an XML standard! However, therein lies the problem. Technology is merely an enabler when it comes to establishing standards. Organizations and individuals must firstly come together to discuss and agree what the standard should be. There then needs to be a comprehensive education program to ensure that everyone understands and buys into the process. Then, there needs to be proper controls and policing so as to ensure that the standards are being adhered to.
The enemy of standards is small mindedness. Organizations caught in an industrial age mind-set believe that making their system different is a competitive advantage. Individuals don’t want to change the way they’ve been doing things.
We live in an increasingly networked economy. Networks operate best when there is the freest flow of information within the network. The long-term benefits of freeing up the flow far outweigh any short-term individual gains of blocking that flow.
Achieving common standards for the creation, organization and publication of information is a critical challenge that faces the information society. The question is: Can we turn our billions of documents of content into well organized libraries, or are we going to feed bulging hard disk dumps that reek of poorly prepared, out-of-date and irrelevant data?
Technology alone will not solve the problem. In fact, technology, without proper standards, is making the problem a lot worse a lot faster. Technology is giving us bigger dump trucks and bigger dumps, thus encouraging more messy behavior.
The mess in Florida is no exception. The entire US voting system is creaking and leaking. Up until an extremely close election it avoided the microscope of attention. How many other information systems are creaking and leaking? I would safely say that if the world’s information systems were tested in the same way cars are, then very few of them would be on the road.
How do we start solving the problem? The short-term solution is for organizations to make the implementation of information standards a key part of their strategy going forward. Organizations need to initiate or join industry groups seeking to establish common standards.
The long-term solution involves re-thinking how we educate our children and staff. We need to encourage an ethos where sharing information is highly encouraged, where classifying your information properly is as important as writing well, where writing well is seen as an essential skill of the information worker.
We need to promote information environmentalist thinking. People need to understand that when they send an unnecessary email, ignore or improperly adhere to a standard for the classification of their content, keep twenty versions of a document when they only need two, write 2,000 words when they only need to write 500, they are polluting the network.
Gerry McGovern
Next issue: The networks
Previous issue: Why XML is
important
New Thinking homepage
New Thinking Newsletter
Subscribe to this free weekly newsletter covering the role and function of content on the Web.
More info | Privacy policy
Read the current issue
Content management seminar feedback
"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association
“Excellent presenter ... thought-provoking and relevant. I hope we can persuade him to visit us again one day.”
Malcolm Davison
The British Association of Communicators in Business
"Hearing Gerry McGovern speaking, one can feel that he truly masters the subject of content management. He was voted ‘best speaker of the conference’ by delegates."
Toon Lowette
European Association of Directory Publishers
Find out more about Gerry McGovern's seminars
Achieving common standards for the creation, organization and publication of information is a critical challenge that faces the information society.
Home - >What's New - About - Solutions - Clients - >Publications - Contact - Search
Tel: +353 87 238 6136
Email: info@gerrymcgovern.com
Privacy Policy
Copyright © Gerry McGovern. All rights reserved.