Do semantic standards lack quality A survey among

Authors: Erwin Folmer Paul Oude Luttighuis Jos van Hillegersberg

Publish Date: 2011/04/26

Volume: 21, Issue: 2, Pages: 99-

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Abstract

The adoption of standards to improve interoperability in the automotive aerospace shipbuilding and other sectors could save billions While interoperability standards have been created for a number of industries problems persist suggesting a lack of quality of the standards themselves The issue of semantic standard quality is not often addressed In this research we take a closer look at the quality of semantics standards development processes and survey the current state of the quality of semantic standards by means of a questionnaire that was sent to standards developers This survey looked at 34 semantic standards and it shows that the quality of semantic standards for interorganizational interoperability can be improved Improved standards may advance interoperability in networked business Improvement of semantic standards requires transparency of their quality Although many semantic standard development organisations already have quality assurance in place this research shows that they could benefit from a quality measuring instrumentAs early as 1993 a number of businesses and governments alike were aware of the importance of standards for ensuring interoperability Rada 1993 Today in an increasingly interconnected world interoperability is more important than ever and interoperability problems are very costly Studies of the US automobile sector for example estimate that insufficient interoperability in the supply chain adds at least 1 billion in additional operating costs of which 86 is attributable to data exchange problems Brunnermeier and Martin 2002 The adoption of standards to improve interoperability in the automotive aerospace shipbuilding and other sectors could save billions Gallaher et al 2002Although interoperability standards have been created for a range of industries Zhao et al 2005 problems persist suggesting a lack of quality of the standards themselves and the processes by which they are developed In 2009 the European Commission recognized the importance of quality of standards and set a policy to “increase the quality coherence and consistency of ICT standards” European Commission 2009 Sherif et al 2005 state that their paper on standards’ quality was the first to address this topic albeit only for technical standards But what about semantic standards Even though they are important in the creation of interorganizational interoperability and solving data exchange problems is there a need to measure the quality of semantic standardsThe ability to measure the quality of semantic standards can be useful to compare the quality of different standards but also to improve the quality of individual standards Regarding semantic standards Markus et al 2006 asserts “the success of vertical information systems standards diffusion is affected by the technical content of the developed standard …” In other words the quality of a standard is directly correlated to its adoption However adoption involves acceptance and implementation and does not necessarily mean that interoperability will be achieved In other words not all successful standards high adoption are high quality standards that lead to interoperabilityDespite the importance of standards in the evolution of information and communication technology Lyytinen and King 2006 the issue of semantic standard quality is not often addressed Folmer et al 2009 In this research we take a closer look at the quality of semantics standards and their development processes and survey the current state of quality and adoption of semantic standards through a survey of standards developersDevelopment approach Most semantic standards are developed outside traditional Standard Development Organizations eg ISO Rada and Ketchell 2000 resulting in a wide range of standard development organisations per industry RosettaNet for the electrotechnical industry HL7 for health care etc each having their own development and maintenance approach

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