Industry pushes feds to adopt open standards

Can government adopt open standards in its information technology infrastructure?

Comment on this article in The Forum.The answer to that question, which was circulating the FOSE conference in Washington on Tuesday, is yes, only if it is endorsed from the top ranks and integrated into daily operations of federal employees.

Open standards are based on publicly available specifications that are not owned by any company or individual, and therefore offer a common method for development and integration, and allow for easier interoperability between hardware and software platforms. In a December 2000 revision to Circular A-130, the Office of Management and Budget instructed agencies to "address steps necessary to create an open systems environment" by developing information systems that promote interoperability, application portability, and scalability of computerized applications across networks of heterogeneous hardware, software and communications platforms.

But federal agencies' acceptance of open standards has been slow.

"Adoption of open [standards] would require a cultural change," said one official from the Social Security Administration who asked not to be identified.

Often there's a perception that open standards introduce security risks. "I would support it, but the agency wouldn't," the official said. "There needs to be a top down [approach] for real adoption to happen."

Industry is trying to convince agencies to accept open standards. This week, Cisco announced its latest offering that targets government. The Cisco Open Platform for Safety and Security provides agencies with employee and asset security features through a network-based solution built on open standards.

Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems and chairman of the company's federal business, argued the economic advantage to open source software, which takes the concept of open standards one step further by making the source code of a software program available for use or modification by users or other developers. The majority of code for Sun's Solaris Unix-based operating system is open source.

"Free is a pretty good business model," McNealy said during a keynote at the conference this week. "There's no barrier to entry. The beauty of open source software is it's a click away."

Open source software also is easily removed, which is a cost that acquisition officers often don't consider, McNealy said. Acquisition officers consider the upfront purchase price and the cost of ownership in buying decisions, he said, but rarely factor in the cost to transition off a given technology once it becomes obsolete.

"Technology is three to four generations behind by the time [government puts it into] production, given the purchasing environment," he said. "[But] technology has the shelf life of a banana. So then, the question is, 'How do I get off this, because it's now a three-year-old banana?' Barrier to exit is the lowest it can be if you have open source," because it's free and by definition adaptable to change.

McNealy also argued against "myths" that security and support are lacking in "freeware," saying that software developed with open standards typically goes through more stringent testing than proprietary technology and full support is available for tools offered by reputable vendors.

Agencies are demonstrating the potential of open standards. Intellipedia, the intelligence community's version of Wikipedia, allows authenticated users to contribute information by creating, editing and discussing articles. Unveiled in 2006, Intellipedia has more than 35,000 registered users and reached 1 million total edits in September 2007.

The framework for the offering is largely built using open standards, said Don Burke, the doyen, or senior member of the CIA's Intellipedia effort. It was first adopted by a small group of CIA employees who obtained permission to work on the project, which resided outside the agency's firewall. Now its use has expanded across all levels within the CIA.

While Burke agreed that endorsement from the top is helpful, grass-roots efforts within an agency often drive wider acceptance of open IT solutions.

"Users [need to be a] part of the process and rally around the [technology]," he said, adding that efforts passed from the top down too often die after the chief official pushing the reform leaves the agency. "There needs to be passion."