Joris Gresnigt is the chair of the recently established SEMIC.EU community "Adoption and Reuse of Semantic Resources and Open Standards".
He plans to exchange good practices and experiences in standards adoption and semantic interoperability.
SEMIC.EU Your initiative for this community is a welcome move to coordinate dispersed European initiatives better and by direct communication. Who is the Dutch Standardisation Forum already in contact with? How has the exchange of good practices and experiences taken place so far?
Joris Gresnigt As a Forum we find international cooperation very important. To learn from others we visited Estonia in 2007 en Denmark in 2008. Through the IDABC/ISA expert groups we participate in (EIF, CAMSS, NIFO, SEMIC) we keep contact with many different countries and of course with the EC. We share information as much as possible via mail. We have special ties with Denmark and Belgium. Recently we exchanged information and lined up our comments on the EIF review with several countries.
SEMIC.EU SEMIC.EU has a wide base of users and active contributors from a variety of domains. What are your particular target groups for the community?
Joris Gresnigt The community addresses issues relevant for all European professionals in public services, eGovernment and administrations dealing with data exchange.
It welcomes explicitly all those who work initiatives or contribute directly to initiatives related to the selection and adoption of open standards and data exchange between different national data models and concepts. Non member states like Norway and Japan are also welcomed.
SEMIC.EU What are the next steps? Do you plan any workshops or meetings with the founding members of the community?
Joris Gresnigt A meeting is planned in the spring in Oslo, hosted by Norway. Other meetings/workshops are to be determined in the coming period.
SEMIC.EU What is your vision for the community looking ahead ? how does the group operate a year from now and what would you see as milestones in the foreseeable future?
Joris Gresnigt A year from now the community exchanges information on concrete topics, work towards aligning the approaches if beneficial and solve issues together. There is a good overview on how different member states select standards and promote the adoption of standards. The different methods and concepts on how to deal with semantic interoperability of data are shared and, if beneficial, aligned. A mile stone would be solving concrete problems like having a standard for classification of standards and really reusing each other assessments of standards.
SEMIC.EU Thank you very much.