OASIS Open

Arizona Supreme Court

No

I vote NO because I believe the ECF 5 specification is not yet ready for public review and comment. In my estimation, the TC still has some distance to go in crafting this specification. Getting it right is far more important than getting it fast. As a dot zero specification (i.e. 5.0), any revisions subsequently made are constrained by the initial specification. Therefore, the dot zero release needs to be solid. Earlier versions of ECF suffered from lack of efiling experience. This experience has grown over time. ECF5 should encompass the breadth and depth of the all the TC has learned about electronic filing. This is our chance to create a specification that truly sets a standard and promotes interoperability, which has been too lacking up to now. Currently ECF relies too heavily on the schema being normative (and as such, the schema is substantively the specification). But what does this truly mean, that the schema is normative? Does it mean that messages must be well formed and valid? Well-formed and valid does not by itself ensure interoperability or even understanding. How many countless hours have implementers wrestled with the current specification trying to decrypt what is meant or suggested, trying to determine what is the right way to do one thing or another, only to arrive at a different understanding than other implementers? I am confident this TC has the members with the talent, insight and experience to truly establish a specification that both promotes interoperability in key and core areas, while maintaining appropriate flexibility to address individualized needs. I further believe that it is the TC that can and should provide the most important and insightful considerations in specification review. I expect that public review will not penetrate as deeply or as broadly as internal TC review can and will.