SCA Blog

The second SCA Wales forum, held in Cardiff on 5 June, was opened by Dr Rhidian Griffiths, Director of Public Services at the National Library of Wales. He highlighted the importance of partnership in expanding access to online resources, mentioning the Library’s ‘digital mirror’project, its archive of the Welsh in Ohio, and library.wales.org as examples of how the NLW is working with other organisations to provide sustainable collections.

“Digital developments will also throw up questions about IP and new thinking about creators and users and their rights,” said Dr Griffiths.

“The balance is shifting in the digital world. It will promote new thinking about sustainability, thinking not only about this generation’s audience but audiences in generations to come. There are also considerations of widening access and defining new audiences and audiences who will function in different ways to the traditional. The aim is to give that wider audience a deeper understanding of what exists in our libraries museums and archives.”

Read on for coverage of Chris Batt’s presentation on audiences, Naomi Korn’s testbedding of a new model of IPR, and how the breakout session on business models asked itself ‘how do you solve a problem like JANET’?

CHRIS BATT: AUDIENCES AD EVALUATION

This is effectively a marketing exercise for the Audience Analysis and Modelling report I produced with the SCA team after a piece of work I did earlier this year. I’ll go through the reasons for it, steps I took and the outcomes.

The intent

We tried to evince from the broader directions of the SCA work programme what we were trying to do with audiences.

We are trying to look at the other end of the value chain. We spend a lot of time looking at the harvesting of resources and the technology that makes it possible but much less time and energy looking at how successful they are and what return does the public sector get for the return it makes – the outcomes and impact. Why should anyone bother to digitise without knowing if it has some effect at the other end of the supply chain?

We wanted to look at the methodology SCA sponsors are using at the moment and get from those organisations what market intelligence they have. What is their understanding of their digital audience, the audiences their services are going to – do they know about existing user behaviour? How do people discover their stuff? Do they use Google? Are organisations keeping up with developing trends?

We sought to find a way of turning those general questions into a short piece of work to identify three key areas to look at in relation to audiences:

- what do sponsors already know
- could we produce a matrix from what they know
- agreed scenarios to test against front ends

The approach

• series of structured interviews with sca sponsors
• second layer interviews with a number of other key players
• correspondence with international contacts (Australia, Canada, EU, New Zealand, Singapore)
• desktop research

The interview questionnaire considered:

supply and demand
– what audiences are you mandated to serve, their needs and the range of econtent provided for them
– systematic research to establish types and needs of audience
– content services targeted at specific audience groups
– what collaboration to aggregate content and services
– approaches to enriched discovery for target groups (search tools, web 2.0, authenticated access)

Resource discovery
- priorities for improvement through audience research, audience involvement in design, exploit public search tools, personalisation
- audience trends analysis and future watching
- personalised services such as VLEs, Google Custom search etc

Evaluation
- performance tracking tools and services
- qualitative research on impact and to discover user needs
- systematic evaluation of impact and outcomes
- approaches to evaluation of SCA demonstrators

The leg work

18 interviews with 31 participants and two days of desk research

Interviews included the SCA sponsors. Each interview lasted an hour to an hour and a quarter. In one case an interview took place with a number of people such as MLA, and with JISC interviewed a number of people

Outside the sponsors, also spoke to EDINA, MIMAS, OII, UKOLN, Wellcome and others – chosen for experience in the issues around distribution of content or crating it directly

We discovered “a rich but complex landscape”…

The outcomes

The environment we are in remains fluid and much less clearly defined than, say, understanding the way to put collections together so that people can access them (standards).

Everyone who was interviewed agreed that understanding the needs and expectations of audiences is critical to future development.

Everybody is looking at things like web 2.0 and personalisation to improve discovery and involve users.

The British Library is very involved in Facebook and using things like YouTube in exhibitions such as Ramayana – don’t know yet the value but it is an interesting way to create connections between audiences and services.

Contract negotiation – there is a significant degree of overlap and a number of those organisations are keen to move forward and to find ways to overcome the fact that many people are entitled to multiple routes into the same services funded by the public purse.

Examples of user feedback mechanisms in the supply chain:

• The web of knowledge (MiMAS) – has series of advisory groups looking at the service
• NeSC Training Database - has a sophisticated mechanism for evaluation of the courses in its database and is able to get people to give very strong feedback on how it performs
• Online questionnaires from the British Library

Organisations are starting to use these techniques and there is overall agreement that the current tools for evaluation are very hit and miss and leave much to be desired. There needs to be a degree of convergence if we want to make comparisons and have more understanding of how they work such as web analytics.

There is considerable work focused on repositories but a consistent approach is yet to emerge, even within the SCA sponsors.

CIBER Deep Web Analysis technique offers a way to drill down much more and exploit better existing data sets.

JISC and associated bodies have produced significant corpus of research and knowledge that is not widely known

The consequences

The need for a common language
- audience, user, consumer, citizen, academic, researcher, student etc etc
- public value, supply chain, value chain
There is no common language and audience schemas – so many words to describe what an audience might be and people use them interchangeably. What do we mean by supply chain? Do organisations even recognise that there is one there? The organisations that will succeed are the ones that are very clear about the reasons for digitising.

The need for a shared approach
- dealing with web metrics in ways that allow comparison (DWA, mapping of current approaches etc)
- The impact of user-based design and usability testing – BBC doing some of this
- Repositories, federation, service registries – needs to be driven forward more, another one of these niche areas where some know lots about them and others have little understanding
- z39.93 – a NISO standard – complex doc but an example of where within the area of online journals a standards institution has talked to institutions that are doing it and thought about bringing data together – a technical approach but may be a means for the future

There is a call out now for ITT
23 June, holding a workshop in London

Discussion

Naomi Korn: You spoke of need for common approach and language. To expand on that, we not looking so much for common language as benchmarking the language that is out there and with common approaches we should be looking at interoperability of standards. We may not have a common approach but we can understand the approaches that are out there.

CB: To me what is going to be important is trying not to reinvent more square wheels. In an ideal world we’d be running a Stalinist model and if people do not follow it they get shot… but that may not be what we want to do so have to find ways to demonstrate that with only marginal effort organisations can fit into a new way of working – or can make such a compelling case for joining the new language that people forget the old language.

It is quite clear that one needs to stand back and see what the rest of the world is already doing. Could look at the whole online retail environment, not saying we should bring all of that in but there may be styles and approaches which could be useful to take on board. We need to build easy ways for people to feel comfortable in this new area.

Priscilla Dawson: Have you considered any kind of information literacy training the public might need to make best use of the content that is out there?

CB: It’s not directly part of the remit. We’re in a period of transition and my personal view is the more we concentrate on that then the less we focus on creating things that are easy for people to use. People don’t talk about information literacy training with online shopping because it’s intuitive. We’ve always had quite complicated ways of getting people to do things but in a situation where millions of people are relatively illiterate, I would prefer to see very intuitive systems on the web that give people an incentive to learn how to read. But it does need to be addressed and lots of forces being put together by the LSC and so on.

See the slides from Chris Batt’s presentation on Slideshare

NAOMI KORN: IPR CASE STUDY

Today I will be testbedding a new model to see if it explains the types of IPR we have. I call them enablers and disablers.

I thought it would be useful to pick up on Rhidian’s overview and comments on the need for balance between rights for creators and users as it is very pertinent with copyright. It intends to create this balance but the challenge we have now is that our creators are users and we have a varied distribution when we think about the balance within the law and how it operates.

If we think about the content itself, we’re thinking of it as a many layered beast composed of different content types. What we have as a challenge is that in our multimedia world we’re looking at it as not just one but many of these elements together. A video might have voices, film, music and text within it and certainly within the web world it’s very easy to create multi-layered things that we want others to enjoy and gain access to.

The intention of the SCA is to create pathways so that content can reach our users and those users can be many different people – the institution, a student, a researcher, a third party content aggregator – it’s a many varied thing.

When we think about content we have the legislation as an enabler for us – copyright law is on our side as a creator, allowing us to benefit from our labour and allowing others to enjoy it.

Also on the enabler path is the multipath of delivery. We can create and publish content – it’s a wonderful world – only 10 years ago our traditional pathway of getting stuff to our user would be to photocopy stuff and give it to them but now we have so many other routes. But it’s also a cyclical route where our users can also become creators and send that content back to us – a wonderful enabler world.

We have all kinds of licences in this world and JISC works with some of these.

We also have government policy as an enabler – they are helping us to share stuff and may even provide some funding.

Then there are users’ expectations – we have users who expect and hope to gain access to our stuff. A readymade audience is out there and wanting our stuff.

BUT…

We need to look at enablers from two sides as they are also disablers. We may have multi platforms but we also have interoperability - an obstacle along the route stopping our stuff getting to users.

Government legislation can also be a disabler if we don’t own the rights to use the content as other people have created it and may be able to control how it is used. It is one of the biggest disablers for the free flow of content.

Within this landscape we have a big issue in that we often don’t know who the creators of the works were or how to get hold of the rights holders – these are called orphan works – and this becomes a big issue. We are supposed to have all sorts of balances to allow access to other people’s stuff but in reality and in a web interface there are very few exceptions which are any use to us and that’s a massive impediment to the free flow of content for us, and our users.

Information is another disabler – we have lots and lots of it so need to have decent mechanisms and policies to facilitate the management of it. Lots of licences can be a problem because of compatibility issues.

So this is the landscape we’re working in.

SCA IPR: who we are

We are working to create the unblockers to allow content to flow as best as possible and there are loads of opportunities and benefits to think of realising.

We are working until March 31 2009 and have concentrated on:

• policies
• legislation
• licensing
• best practices

We are working on several work packages to:

• scope the issues associated with IPR and licensing
• synthesise current best practice and exemplars
• evaluate potential gaps in best practice and make recommendations for follow up actions
• develop where necessary best practice tools
• disseminate best practice tools to enable the development of an e-content framework

Challenges:

We were aware of many of these challenges before we started the formal scoping work and this work confirmed many of the experiences we already have. Nothing is homogenous within the public sector, even within one sector or even one department whether policies, infrastructure, approaches – it’s all varied. Bodies are funded and staffed in different ways with a range of staff and ‘non-staff’ and there may be small organisations that have huge value and cannot transfer big models to them.

So there is heterogenity of content and a lack of homogenisation but that doesn’t mean that we want to homogenise it. There is also heterogenity of policies - many organisations have different policies towards open access, licenses… The challenge we have is that there is a difference between theory and practice – staff may choose not implement certain policies or there may be unspoken policies towards, say, open access.

Initial results:

Language: there is great variation in the application of terms. For example, non-commercial is bandied around but means different things to different people. Legislators have never given us a definition of what they mean by non-commercial. With licenses we use the licenses that others supply much of the time and so we have no control over what they say and so are subject to their terms and conditions of what they mean by non-commercial. So, for example, Creative Commons’ idea of non-commercial will be different from BBC and from JISC – and there are other interchangeable words. So we need a guide to the terminology, not necessarily to change what they are saying but to understand what they are saying.

Approaches to risk: copyright is not just about the legislation. It’s about implementation and how we deal with stuff covered by copyright. A sensible approach to risk is fundamental to ensuring that even if we do not know who the rights holder is we can still make it accessible especially if it has low commercial value but high academic, scholarly value.

When we looked across the public sector at views of risk, with 0 being risk averse and 5 being most prepared to take risk, we found that the organisations we surveyed were prepared to take quite a high level of risk towards copyright and orphan works. Those that rated orphan works as being a serious impediment were most prepared to take risks. One organisation was prepared to take a 5 in terms of risk – and that organisation had a copyright officer in place that would work with staff to help them take an informed approach.

So the greater the readiness to engage with the issues, the more prepared we are to deal with copyright issues. Then copyright ceases to become something in the statute books, and becomes a live issue, embedded in the organisation.

The resources: Another finding is that there is so much out there that people do not know where to start. A heads-up: on a separate project funded by JISC I am looking at IPR issues in a web 2.0 environment: web2rights.org.uk

The law: There is much work for the SCA to do to release content to get to our users. We can provide best practice guidelines but we can also lobby. We can release a collective force on government, making statements about the law, how it can be better constructed to allow the flow of content, how it can deal with orphan works which is an impediment at the moment.

Next steps

• case studies
• discussion of provisional findings
• meetings
• peer review of outcomes
• dissemination
• facilitation of meetings
• response to the second Gowers consultation

We are also working on more granular case studies. What do we mean by value in terms of content? This is also useful as a lobbying device to make our points clearer – for instance the example of a 1930s photo with high academic value and low economic value but which is still under copyright.

Discussion

Delegate A: I’m not seeing the relationship between this being UK work and international behaviour towards copyright. Today I can go to the MIT website and get what I want, wherever. What is the thinking about the boundaries with this? This is a historical evolutionary approach but does it go against what the rest of the world is doing? The digital world is international so what are we doing on an international scale and what is that relationship? I am concerned that we may be taking a very insular view while the rest of the world goes down an open environment?

NK: The bottom line is that need to bear in mind international cooperation but we’re operating in an environment where on many different levels we are subject to UK law and that’s the fault of the legislators. There is a degree of harmonisation but also a lot that is different. We have a responsibility as first port of call to see what UK is doing. Continual discussions are going on with UK IPO, they are aware of what we are doing and we have roundtable events with them and have been active in responding to the Gowers report. There is also Knowledge Exchange which is working with other countries who are grappling with the same issues and we know they are looking at what the UK is doing. Constituent members of the SCA work on and sit on European projects such as Europeana. We are not operating in a vacuum but also need to bear in mind that the UK legislation constrains us and so we have to start with the UK. Another way we’re trying to deliver the work of the SCA is through licenses and through the terminology there is a way they can be more relevant internationally. I want to reassure you that we are working internationally as far as possible and that we are setting a pathway by which other EU countries can work with us down the line.

Delegate A: I am concerned by the use of ‘European’ - I mean international. In this day and age when you can post the content asset to wherever you want to in the world, where do you host it? Could host it in another country. So the real emphasis is on where content is being consumed versus where it is being hosted in the future. I can see people here getting themselves getting tied up in knots while rest of world plays a different game for other goals.

NK: there are specific constraints in terms of how the law works but with regards to the other areas of our work, that’s not UK-focused at all. All countries have to deal with copyright, license regulation and so on.

Angelo Conti: I’m director of an FE college and we have lots of Chinese students. They haven’t been through the same process of being in coached in how to use copyright material as our home students. They access all sorts of things and are grasping the new web 2.0 technologies and are taking on the notion of sharing and collaboration as something the whole world is doing and approves of. They are being told share your toys – collaboration is good. At the same time as this is going on, there is legislation that says you can’t do this. I probably come from one of those institutions that says “yes, lets take a risk” because I don’t have the resources to stop it being used. I trained as a photographer and was in business for 10 years and I was concerned with copyright them. If I was doing it now, however, I’d be less concerned. Things are changing. Kids today are saying “copyright? what’s that?”

NK: The problem we have is that we have to accept that we are tied by the law and so we need to map out the state of play for not only what is but also what could be if legislators were to take a step back.

AC: Tied by the law? Or tied by how far we are prepared to take the consequences? And if in most cases it is a small fine then may be prepared to take that fine.

NK: I probably have a case study a week from someone who is faced with high bills for failing to get copyright clearance. They can’t afford the fee, they can’t afford the legal advice and are concerned about what the consequences are if they don’t pay. Consequences are different for different people and we need to give people the tools to evaluate the risks for themselves. Different kinds of content will have different types of risk associated with them. Film and music have high risks associated with them. We want to see stuff being used more openly but the reality is that the law is on the side of rights holders and we have to work out how to negotiate it.

CB: The issue with the law is one point but the behaviour of the users could affect the behaviour of the creators – they may create a new model. There’s a legal constraint but there is also negotiation between different parties about how to take it forward. Looking at the diagram as a process of change through time, it’s a complicated landscape but in all that you’re looking at can you see where we ought to be in 10 years time if we all start doing something?

NK: How long have you got?! We spoke about the way our users are determining the flow of content and Creative Commons licenses are showing how this works – using licenses to free up the flow of content. It provides users with an easy way of understanding what they can and can’t do with other people’s content – the use of icons makes it easy for people. The harnessing of new technology makes it easier to deal with some of these issues that come up. I would hope that in 10 years time we have more access both because of better licenses and also better laws to enable that to happen.

Brian Kelly: We need to recognise that we’re in an international environment. We should be optimistic rather than pessimistic as things like Creative Commons are international standards and in open access context there is an international movement looking at agreed international standards and the business context. There is also the Guardian’s free our data campaign. There are lots of positive things happening and we should not just say oh look at the States and how open it is there because there are also forces against that in the States.

Stuart Dempster: Collaboration is much spoken of and actually quite hard to do but we are working with the UK IPO, various US and Canadian agencies and funders, and we have our affiliated members. But we also have limited time and resources and so we need to get our own house in order first. It is a mountain to climb in a short space of time. The SCA is due to complete a content framework for March 09 and that will be v1.0 and we hope to continue beyond that for a three year term.

BREAK-OUT GROUP ON BUSINESS MODELS, FACILITATED BY CHRISTIAN OAKLEY-WHITE

Christian Oakley-White (CO-W): So we’ve decided to focus on revenue models,
other models around fair distribution in shared partnership models/strategic alliances and also shared services agenda. What are the main challenges with revenue models?

Roger Bolam (Voice and Video Development Manager, JANET): The issue with JANET is that we do not want to charge for services but if we do decide to on a cost recovery service then we are competing with commercial services who may be cheaper because of economy of scale. We take topslice funding for infrastructure etc and that comes from Hefce but we need extra revenue to add to things and create new things.

Janet Peters (University Librarian and Senior Assistant Director, Information Services Cardiff): We could allow competitors in and that is one way to do it but then we lose some value.

CO-W: The obvious thing that strikes me is that if you just become a player then you don’t have a sustainable competitive advantage. If you go down the pure pay route then you have to be careful as susceptible to competitors.

RB: And we don’t want to become just an ISP when we feel we are an application provider too. We have to understand what the knock-on effects of charging would be.

JP: Could you go back to the funding bodies and say what you want to do and ask for more funding? Going to JISC rather than colleges?

Angelo Conti (Director of ILT Services, Swansea College): But they would ask what users thought and if you were to ask the users we would have to justify the use and show how it has enhanced our work and we can’t demonstrate that any of this adds value – we know it does but we can’t provide tangible proof, no benchmarking has been done before.

RB: But we need a constant revenue stream, couldn’t keep going back to funders.

CO-W: So you’ve got the pipeline you get funding for but you also have value added services and you want to know how to fund their development in order that they can become self-funding and integrated in the pipeline?

RB: Yes. We’ve thought about advertising but doesn’t fit with our users.

CO-W: Cisco systems decided to outsource their development to smaller firms knowing that one of them would produce a dominant technology and that would belong to Cisco.

RB: We can’t do that as funded with public money.

CO-W: But you could do that internally which brings you back to the same problem of funding or you could see if there is anyone out there in the market…

Chris West (Director of Library and Information Services, Swansea University): We sometimes bid for small pots of money in that way – you develop it, it’s not commercial outsourcing but then it is sustainability that becomes the issue – once people start using it you can’t say you’ve run out of money to continue it.

AC: You have got to look at desires and needs. You have the desire to do things outside your current remit so what are the needs of the sector? JANET can do things because you know you have a chunk of money every year. Colleges don’t have that money to give, colleges are capped. So there is a finite amount of money there if you want to charge colleges. So think of a model where you produce something used outside the academic sector and do it cheaply and then through that the college gets it free. All possibilities but you have to have a good business model and should you be doing something like that with public money? There is also the issue of who you are competing with. Lots of entrepreneurs can’t see how you can run a college on a business model, it just doesn’t work.

CO-W: There seems to be a compromise with JANET at the moment.

RB: It’s sustainable in terms of providing a core network infrastructure but not with providing value added applications. We provide things free at the point of use because they promote education and research. By the way, these are all my thoughts, not the thoughts of JANET.

AC: Is there mileage in looking at significant sectors and what kind of research and development they are interested in and then putting in a collective bid and building a sustainable model like with that?

RB: it’s the sustainability that’s the issue.

AC: So you would need some kind of private sector interest and for that you need to not be skewing the market.

CO-W: Part of the problem is having something useful to all stakeholders. You have that at the moment but you’re stymied as you can’t add any value-added things to that. You’re looking for the panacea where one service has permutations for lots of different stakeholders. So you need to be more focused on those stakeholders in the first place and the other aspect is some decision on what your basic business model is. Are you just a pipeline business or are you in the business of adding value-added services?

AC: What if you were to bring in commercial clients and then you’ve got cost-recovery covered?

CO-W: So increasing the size of the market in a commercially viable market but what capabilities are you bringing to the market?

AC: We’re a training college and we could provide training to other areas. Our extra kudos is because it’s a college. If you bring the JANET service in for ‘free’ then have an advantage.

CO-W: But what’s the core capability you’re bringing to the table?

AC: Education. Without what we do, JANET gets switched off.

CO-W: Alternatives?

AC: With JANET you get a fast connection and reliability.

CO-W: So it’s the technology?

AC: We can deliver our product because of what JANET does.

RB: We have the biggest pipe in Europe

CW: it’s the envy of the world, really.

AC: It’s a 100meg connection, compared with 1-2 meg home broadband.

CO-W: So there are huge opportunities for partnerships with the commercial sector?

RB: But then how happy would a college be sharing their network connection with someone like Unilever? We’d almost have to run them as two separate services.

CO-W: What’s most relevant to you about JANET – cost or bandwidth?

AC: There’s something in looking at the times we don’t use it. From about 8.30pm there’s almost no use…

JP: But that’s not the case for universities – they will be doing research then.

Hilary Malaws (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales): It seems to be a simple choice: either pay more or share your service to keep the costs down.

AC: What about the potential to deliver a TV service to halls of residence? JANET could do that?

RB: We do that at the moment. Would be difficult to do it in people’s homes but do it in some halls.

AC: IPTV would be free and that could be provided, especially as bandwidth use in the evening is reduced anyway.

CO-W: What business models would that fit into?

AC: From HE point of view there’s the opportunity for specialist programmes, educational stuff.

JP: But it is transferring the cost for the individual paying the licence in their room to the institution buying a collective licence.

CO-W: It strikes me that there seems to be a trade off between reducing bandwidth and reducing the cost, and you need to define the market. If you go down the value added service side then you need to be very confident in that and grow them through strategic alliances. If you have got a system that is best in class then there must be potential stakeholders in the private sector who would be willing to be a part of that.

CO-W: So, moving on to strategic alliances…

HM: We were unable to set up the IT network we wanted as we didn’t have the right expertise. Our sister body in Scotland had systems set up but could not sustain them and could not carry on in the same direction. By putting us together we have been able not only to deliver the services at a lower cost than if we had done it alone but also had lots of knock on benefits such as marrying expertise in both places. However, we’re now at the stage where we need a new injection of capital. So do we bring in another body, either commercial or public sector? How do you keep strategic alliances growing?

CO-W: What’s the product?

HM: The product is putting databases on the web – creating a web facility for complicated databases. We are sharing the expertise and cost of doing that but we’re now at capacity again so how do we get the money together to develop that?

CW: And we’re working on a partnership with IT and student records and there are also questions of sustainability once the initial carrot is exhausted, short of being forced to merge, which nobody wants to do.

HM: At least we had a pot of cash on an ongoing basis but it doesn’t meet our increased expectations – the more you provide new products the more people want them.

CW: Underlying it all is the problem that in the public sector, unlike the free market model, you can increase efficiency and output but you don’t get more capital from increasing those things.

CO-W: Is there a new set of clients interested in the material? Do you know who they are?

HM: Not done enough user research to know that but still come to the issue that we provide a free service so where does the money come from for that…

CO-W: Investment costs are not necessarily tangible so strategic alliances don’t necessarily have to be private sector funding but can be bolt-ons or additions. For example, the Independent newspaper provided free content to a Japanese newspaper in exchange for them printing the Independent because they didn’t have printing presses etc in Japan. It is critical to define your audience because then once you have that information you can go out and pick your strategic alliance. in terms of trade-offs, strategic alliances are the only way you can go. Look at the market, what are the market needs, how can you satisfy those needs. Resources need to be aligned and very focused. To be blunt, unless you’re very focused you’re not going to get that funding.

AC: Our purpose is not essentially to make money. Our effectiveness lies in doing the most we can with the money we have and the pat on the back we get from doing that is important. We can focus on a huge amount of activity but if we cannot prove that there is a real tangible benefit that has improved education for students then should you be doing it?

CO-W: But that’s a very short term view - what about in the future when your models change or politics change…you risk being completely outdated.

Paul Abram: We are a not for profit but we also have commercial contracts that make money and we plough those back into foundations. We also have government contracts where we are using our expertise but are still making money that we then plough back in. It gives us lot of leeway.

CO-W: It’s about the ability to think longer term with initial seed capital. Part of the problem in the private sector is to get that seed capital but you guys already have that.

JP: So you are a not for profit and we as customers are paying you for a service and the profit is being put back into other things…maybe your customers would prefer to pay less?

PA: Are we really complying with with our mandate? Yes, if the money gets put back into education.

HM: There is also a political dimension – it would be tempting for public bodies to cut our funding if they see us making commercial partnerships. We would also have to change our skillsets and become more market focused and it would change the nature of our business.

Summing up by Christian Oakley-White

We looked at the JANET model and how it interacts with its stakeholders, and also at strategic alliances. I hope it became clear that “we need more money” cannot be where the justification ends - there are no panaceas, no black and white and you have to decide which trade-off is least painful.

JANET offers an infrastructure pipeline to allow services to be delivered to its stakeholders. The challenge they face is in bolting on value-added services and getting funding from them. Users may not feel that it’s not what they necessarily want aligned with the service. A key point is that they have two options: become a pure player or find a way to rebalance the system in way that becomes acceptable. The pipeline does seem to be best in class so the question is whether to just focus on that element or else to look at how they could potentially form alliances with others in the private sector to help develop the value-added services which can be added to the pipeline. If they do focus on the pipeline then they become a pure player and that does make them susceptible to future competitors.

The strategic alliances in both the cases we looked at became short term measures but the key issue that came up is sustainability – and that comes down to hard choices.

Feedback from the Standards breakout session by Brian Kelly

In Scotland we had quite a technical discussion and decided that standards were too important just to be left to technical people. More attention was needed at management and practitioner levels. There was an honest appreciation of some of the difficulties of standards.

In Belfast, where everybody took part in the session, some people did not understand what standards had to do with them, which reinforced the Scottish point. Naomi gave a great talk on IPR with the onion model and I thought it could be applied to standards. We also decided that what we want is what standards provide, not them per se. We need to have a better understanding of why we need them and the benefits they provide.

Today, Chris Batt made the point that sometimes we need to throw things away. There is a cost associated with that but it can also be a radical change. The web itself was a change like that. We might need to be honest about needing to change. There is the example of the Stalinist approach in Sweden towards changing the driving side of the road where it happened overnight and people on the wrong side were arrested.

Chris reiterated the point that talk of standards puts people off and you need a narrative of the benefits. So we need a new model. Here’s the Kelly-Korn model:
- what is a standard: mature standards, fledgling standards, legacy standards, failed standards, those not yet recognised
- There are also disablers and also need a risk assessment associated with use of standards and the risk of not using standards – there are also costs of refreshing our resources, on training and support – but that does not mean that we don’t do anything. We also need to factor in the costs of not adopting the standards