[CAnet - news] UK & Australia announce SOA program for education and research

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[Thanks to Richard Ackerman for this pointer -- BSA]

http://www.e-framework.org




The e-Framework for Education and Research

The e-Framework is an initiative by the U.K's Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC), Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training
(DEST) and partners to produce an evolving and sustainable, open standards
based service oriented technical framework to support the education and
research communities.

The e-Framework supports a service-oriented approach to developing and
delivering education, research and management information systems. Such an
approach maximises the flexibility and cost effectiveness with which systems
can be deployed, both in an institutional context, nationally and
internationally.

The e-Framework allows the community to document its requirements and
processes in a coherent way, and to use these to derive a set of
interoperable network services that conform to appropriate open standards.
By documenting requirements, processes, services, protocol bindings and
standards in the form of 'reference models' members of the community are
better able to collaborate on the development of service components that
meet their needs (both within the community and with commercial and other
international partners). The 'e-Framework' also functions as a strategic
planning tool for the Collaboration Partners.

The initiative builds on the e-Learning Framework and the JISC Information
Environment as well as other service oriented initiatives in the areas of
scholarly information, research support and educational administration.

The e-Framework is being developed in accordance with the following guiding
principles:

   1. The adoption of a service oriented approach to system and process
integration
          * A service oriented framework provides significant benefits to
stakeholders including policy makers, managers, institutions, suppliers and
developer and is one approach for developing ICT infrastructure that is
business driven and encourages innovation by being agile and adaptive.
          * A service oriented framework provides the best means of
addressing systems integration issues within institutions, between
institutions and across the domains within education and research.
          * The definition of services is driven by business requirements
and processes.
          * The factoring of the services is a key to the effectiveness of
the framework.
          * High level abstract services should not duplicate or overlap
another service.
          * An abstract service definition is a description of a service
that is independent of the language or platform that may be used to
implement the service.
          * The e-Framework activities will strive for technical excellence
and adoption of best practice

   2. The development, promotion and adoption of Open Standards
          * Open Standards are key to achieving integration between systems,
institutions and between domains in the education and research communities.
          * In order to achieve impact open standards require international
collaboration and consensus.
          * Open Standards are key to achieving integration between systems,
institutions and between domains in the education and research communities.
          * In order to achieve impact open standards require international
collaboration and consensus.

   3. Community involvement in the development of the e-Framework
          * Open and transparent processes are essential for the development
of the e-Framework.
          * Collaboration between technical and domain experts,
practitioners, developers and vendors will be essential to the evolution and
uptake of the e-Framework approach.
          * Capacity and capability need to be developed in communities to
enable effective use of the e-Framework.

   4. Open collaborative development activities
          * In order to support the on-going e-Framework evolution, results
will be made publicly available.
          * Engagement with communities of use will be essential in the
development of the e-Framework.
          * Sustained international development of the e-Framework cannot be
undertaken by a single organisation and collaboration between organisations
is required.
          * Where possible and appropriate, Open Intellectual Property
licensing approaches (such as open source, creative commons, royalty free
patent licences) will be adopted.

   5. Deployment of the e-Framework
          * The e-Framework will support and promote flexible deployment by
institutions.
          * The e-Framework facilitates incremental deployment and change
can be accomplished by implementing many small improvements over time
          * Institutions will decide whether to use open or closed source
implementations in deploying the e-Framework

The e-Frameworks founding organisations, DEST and JISC, have devised a
temporary model for the management of and engagement with the e-Framework
designed to support the incubation and nurture of the e-Framework,
throughout the critical early years of development. The governance and
stewardship structures will be iteratively refined as part of the
e-Framework work plan. In the first year the development of the e-Framework
will be driven by the priorities of the Collaboration Partners and the work
plan will be tailored to their programmes and projects. The first review of
the Governance and Stewardship Model will be conducted by the Collaboration
Partners in February 2006.

In this initiation phase, some, if not most of the work associated with The
e-Framework will primarily be generated within the JISC and DEST existing
structures and their funded work programmes and projects. Some of aspects of
the work will be undertaken in joint JISC DEST groups, both those formally
established and described in the Governance and Stewardship Model and "ad
hoc" working groups that develop as required to address particular
priorities and identified areas of common interest.

This page is a place holder for the e-framework website which will be
developed over the next few months.

....

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those  of the CANARIE board or management.

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