Architects of the Information Age

Paul Miller ( Homepage)     (UKOLN)

Ariadne 2001
(ReLIS:doi:doiari:y:2001:i:29:p:2)

Abstract:

In July of this year, Interoperability Focus organised a meeting at the Office of the e–Envoy, the Cabinet Office unit responsible for driving forward the UK's e–Government initiatives. Across an increasing number of initiatives and programmes, there is a growing recognition of the need for common 'architectures' within which truly useful applications and services may be constructed. Partly, these architectures form a philosophical basis within which developments may be undertaken. Further, though, such architectures in their broadest sense may include the specification of a common technical basis for working (such as the New Opportunities Fund's Technical Guidelines), consideration of shared middleware services (such as the ATHENS service which controls access to a range of resources within further and higher education), as well as often detailed technical specifications. It remains important that such architectures not be driven forward solely in a technological context, but that their design, implementation and evolution continually be informed by institutional and user requirements and aspirations. This one day colloquium sought to encourage an open discussion of the issues related to a number of emerging architectures, with a view to informing those at an earlier stage in their deliberations, encouraging an information flow between more established infrastructures, and hopefully serving to reduce the potential for duplication of effort and the adoption of unnecessarily different solutions to essentially similar problems. The proceedings were introduced by three presentations on quite different approaches; the DNER Architecture being developed by UKOLN for the UK's Further and Higher Education sector, the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) mandated across the UK Public Sector, and the Department of Culture, Media & Sport's (DCMS) vision for Culture Online . The presentations themselves are available online. Rather than discuss them, this paper seeks to draw out a number of the issues raised in the presentations and the ensuing wide–ranging discussion. In most cases, it is only possible to flag issues in need of further study, rather than to offer concrete solutions.

Note: Paul Miller reports on a recent UKOLN–organised event at the Office of the e–Envoy, and begins to explore the need for an architecture to scope more of what we are building online.
Month: 02-October-2001
Year: 2001

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