Silver Bullets, How Interoperable Data Will Revolutionize Information
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SILVER BULLETS How Interoperable Data Will Revolutionize Information Sharing and Transparency Pete O’Dell Silver Bullets isn’t about understanding the technology of standard, interoperable data; it’s about why the technology is important and how you can use it. If you care about effective operations, no matter your job title, this book is for you. Interoperable data is a major game changer for business and information technology, government and commercial, national and international organizations. This book will let you make it happen, versus wondering what happened and how you were left behind. As Frederick Brooks famously noted in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, there is no single-approach solution – no Silver Bullet – that delivers significant improvements in productivity, reliability, or simplicity. But in Silver Bullets, Pete O’Dell shows how a single concept – standardized data interoperability – yields improvements in any industry to which it is applied. O’Dell builds his case by reviewing the past. From the Great Wall of China to shipping containers, from punched cards to the VISA network, standardization has fueled enormous breakthroughs. O’Dell investigates current data standardization including XML and the Common Alerting Protocol, using case studies to illustrate success stories ranging from homeland defense to diabetes management. Finally, O’Dell offers practical suggestions on how to get started with interoperable data and points to emerging leaders in commercial, governmental and not-for-profit fields. This accessible, plain-spoken book is full of parables, anecdotes and stories, delivering humor as well as insight. Reading it enables you to make practical decisions about your organization’s future and growth. Silver Bullets shines a clear light into your inoperable future. Like Thomas Friedman showed inThe World is Flat (2005), Pete O’Dell demonstrates how information is also becoming flat – standardized, sharable, real-time and globalized. Friedman showed how the Internet enabled Syntactic interoperability – two or more systems capable of communicating and exchanging data. Beyond the ability of two systems to exchange information, O’Dell demonstrates the next stage in information sharability – Semantic interoperability. Semantic interoperability is the ability to interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately in order to produce useful results. Who will most benefit from data interoperability? O’Dell convincingly predicts that the biggest beneficiaries will be institutions and their constituents offering e-Government Services, e-Law Enforcement, and e-Health Care Services. Silver Bullets is recommended for those who seek not only to understand data interoperability, but also to capitalize on its predicted benefits. —Neil R. Evans Former CIO, Microsoft Corporation Contributing Author, Technology Everywhere – A Campus Agenda for Educating and Managing Workers in the Digital Age (2002), Educause Leadership Strategies, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pete O’Dell’s good book boils down to one main point: Standardized, interoperable data is the answer to a host of questions, and it can’t come too soon. This is a book for the business or operations executive who wants to shake hands with the future rather than be run over by it. Pete shows how standards support civilization in every area from transportation to health care, and maps the way ahead with clarity, good will and humor. —Bill Lang Author of Scores on the Board: The 5-Part System for Building Skills, Teams and Businesses Managing risk involves effectively managing data, finding its patterns while keeping information secure. Silver Bullets lays out a strong case for interoperable data systems that save time and money, and reduce risk. —Annie Searle Annie Searle & Associates Risk Consultants This book is for all of us who live in the real world where information must be shared and acted upon, not just for the techno geeks who understand ones and zeros. As the Commander of U.S. Forces in Japan during the U.S. response to the horrifictsunami that took over 350,000 lives in the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004, I was responsible for a bulk of the support that we provided to the senior U.S. military commander deployed to Thailand. We quickly found out that in spite of our ability to provide the President with streaming video of our operations, we could not communicate with NGOs, PVOs or even the Indonesian military, using our protected communications systems. As we tried to meet the humanitarian needs of those affected by the tsunami, we found that we could not communicate with those who knew what those needs were. We solved this problem with an inelegant solution: We established a Yahoo.com account that enabled us to match resources against humanitarian requirements. Had we been able to share interoperable data with those who had it, our task would have been more complete. Kudos to Pete O’Dell for issuing this wake-up call. Adoption of his vision could have saved lives then, and could save lives in the future. —Lt. Gen. Thomas C. Waskow, Ret. Commander, U.S. Forces Japan; Commander, 5th Air Force, Yokota Air Base, Japan Pete O’Dell builds a convincing case that all sectors of business activity thrive when they adopt standards to streamline commerce and internal operations. He illustrates how far such adoption has to go in the data field, then details how a variety of open- source standards are capable of dramatically speeding the use of interoperable data models globally, across sectors. When that happens, every aspect of business will be simplified and linked! —W. David Stephenson Stephenson Strategies; Author, Democratizing Data (coming Summer 2010) One of the greatest challenge for marketers today is how to access, harness and leverage data to optimize revenue and earnings. It ain’t easy; in fact it’s bloody hard. Pete O’Dell gets it, and with Silver Bullets, he challenges CXOs to focus on data in a new way. Get excited about interoperable data; your cash flow goals may depend on it in our new digital world. —Tim Carroll Global Chief Marketing Officer, Village Roadshow, Melbourne, Australia How Interoperable Data Will Revolutionize Information Sharing and Transparency Pete O’Dell AuthorHouse™ 1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, IN 47403 www.authorhouse.com Phone: 1-800-839-8640 Copyright © 2010 by Pete O’Dell All rights reserved Also by Pete O’Dell: The Computer Networking Book Book design by Sherry Lamoreaux Title design by Justin Buckley Author Photograph by Pam Angelus No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. First published by AuthorHouse 04/02/2010 ISBN: 978-1-4490-4075-8 (sc) iSBN: 978-1-4490-4076-5 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-4490-4077-2 (e) Library of Congress Number: 2010903540 Printed in the United States of America Bloomington, Indiana, on acid-free paper. D e d i c a t i o n To Pam Angelus for so many reasons. Thank you for all your love, support, and encouragement. This book literally would not have happened without you. Special thanks Special thanks to Sherry Lamoreaux for her tireless editing. I still don’t know when a dash or an em-dash makes sense, but I trust they are in good order. Another very special thank you to Jim, Lynn, Tim, and John. You were there at just the right moment, and I’m deeply appreciative. Form follows structure; structure doesn’t follow form. — I.M. Pei, architect C o n t e n t s Foreword xiii Acknowledgements xv Chapter One A major opportunity to improve civilization 11 A n O p i n i o n The top ten benefits resulting from the broad adoption of interoperable data 31 Chapter Two Long-ago standards: things you’ll recognize 37 C a s e S t u d y Jefferson Parish, Louisiana tackles Hurricane Gustav 47 Chapter Three Near-past lessons: standardized technology and computing 49 Chapter Four The beginning of standardized data transactions 61 C a s e S t u d y Using interoperable data to improve diabetes management 71 Chapter Five The emergence of Extensible Markup Language; (XML); a tour of major initiatives 73 Chapter Six Two great interoperable data standards: CAP and KML 91 C a s e S t u d y Golden Phoenix 109 Chapter Seven Interoperable data efforts: things you can watch, use, leverage, and adopt 115 xi Chapter Eight Executing a data interoperability pilot (right now) 131 C a s e S t u d y External alarm interface exchange standard 141 Chapter Nine The far-flung future: where do we go from here? 145 Chapter Ten Raves and conclusions 163 A p p e n d i x A Chapter notes and suggested reading 175 A p p e n d i x B Best of NIEM Awards 2009 Inaugural 187 A p p e n d i x C World Meteorological Organization Members 193 About the Author 195 Index 197 xii F o r e w o r d Sharable data can change the world. The web, at its root, is simply a standard protocol for data and virtually the whole network as we use it today has arisen from a similar source. Successful data standards come to be taken for granted, but building them takes work, foresight, and both technical and political leadership. Pete O’Dell combines a high-level analysis of the function of data standards with detailed, telling examples, and his book is both a guide and an inspiration to the people who are setting out to reform data sharing systems in government and business. —Gary Wolf Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine xiii Acknowledgements I have the privilege of having very smart friends, associates, and volunteers who were kind enough to read this book while it was in progress.