OASIS Adoption Forum in London Brings International Standards Community Together to Explore Advances for e-Government, e-Health, and e-Commerce
Ovum Provides Keynote on Open Standards and Open Source; Special Add-On Event Showcases OpenDocument and DITA
London, England; 13 Sept 2005 – International standards consortium, OASIS, will host its annual European Adoption Forum in London, 17 October 2005. The event provides an opportunity for users, government agencies, researchers, and developers from around the world to explore what open standards mean for today’s e-government, e-health, and e-commerce communities. The OASIS Adoption Forum will examine how open standards relate to open source efforts and what benefits specifications such as the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) and the Election Markup Language (EML) offer users. Presentations from HM Revenue & Customs on standards and taxation, from the Netherlands Ministry of Finance on best practices for e-government, and from the Norwegian Insurance Administration on its ebXML-based national e-health infrastructure will also be featured.
Ovum senior analyst, Bola Rotibi, who will provide the keynote address for the event stated, "The terms ‘open standards’ and ‘open source’ are often misunderstood and misrepresented. Users need to look beyond ‘open’ and play an active role in ensuring that the standards being developed today meet their needs for interoperability. At the OASIS Adoption Forum, we’ll further a dialogue between users and developers on the common ground, as well as the divergence in the methods and goals behind each approach."
"It is critical for members of both the public and private sectors in Europe to stay abreast of the standards efforts that are shaping the marketplace," said event chair, John Borras, CEO of the United Kingdom’s Local e-Government Standards Body. "The OASIS Adoption Forum offers an ideal opportunity for those who may not be involved in the day-to-day development of standards to understand the trends, the status, and the actual business cases that drive this work."
The Forum will feature a panel addressing how standards organizations can coordinate efforts to promote real interoperability. Leaders from Europe’s most influential standards bodies including CEN/ISSS, GS1, ICTSB, and ITU will join OASIS CEO, Patrick Gannon, and panel moderator, Patrick Smith of Xenos, to discuss how their organizations are responding to user outcry for more cooperation in the standards development arena.
Attendance is open to all interested parties, and early bird discounts are available for those who register before 16 September. Meeting costs are offset by the support of OASIS Foundational Sponsors, BEA Systems, Innodata Isogen, SAP, and Sun Microsystems, and by event sponsors, HP, IBM, and Xenos.
OpenDocument and DITA Focus
The OASIS Adoption Forum will be followed by a special add-on event showcasing two newly approved OASIS Standards, OpenDocument and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). DITA builds content reuse into the authoring process for document creation and management. OpenDocument provides a royalty-free, XML-based file format that covers features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents.
"Massachusetts recently proposed a requirement for all state office documents and presentations to be output in a format that is compliant with the OpenDocument OASIS Standard, and many European governments are considering similar policies," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "In London, we’ll examine how companies and organizations can migrate to OpenDocument. We’ll also discuss the ways industry sectors, such as pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and telecommunications, can standardize on DITA subject-matter vocabularies within their communities."
Attendees of the OASIS Adoption Forum may participate in the OpenDocument and DITA Focus at no additional cost. Registration for the Focus alone, which will be held from 9:00 am until noon on Tuesday, 18 October, is also available. The OpenDocument and DITA Focus is sponsored by Sun Microsystems.
More information: http://www.oasis-open.org/events/adoption_forum_2005/
About OASIS: OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML Registry, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org
Press contact:
Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209