Recent research shows that the American automobile industry incurs interoperability costs to the tune of more than five billion dollars. These costs are the result of a lack of standards or the fact that the ones that do exist do not adequately solve the problems in question. “And these costs are much too high”, said University of Twente (UT) researcher Erwin Folmer. “Great benefits can be achieved with high quality standards.” Billions are involved – in various branches. The UT and Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) have now developed an instrument to improve the quality of standards. Folmer will obtain his doctorate for this research on Thursday 5 April 2012.
Interoperability is the ability of organizations to work together by means of computer systems. It is all about more efficient cooperation between government parties and a more efficient and effective business sector. Folmer’s research shows that the quality of standards can be greatly improved and that this will lead to a better exchange of data between organizations and, thus, save money.
No Internet without standards
A life without standards is hardly conceivable. The ‘metre’ and ‘kilogram’ are standards we use every day, but the euro currency, euro 95 (unleaded 95) petrol, A4 paper, etc. are also indispensable. The situation in the ICT world is no different; in fact, the Internet would not exist without ICT standards such as Internet Protocol (IP) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Semantic standards are a particular type of standards which concern the meaning of information.
Save billions
Research showed that the advantages of standards in different industrial sectors run into billions and that lives are saved by interoperability in the healthcare sector. “In the past, in the employment agency industry, for example, every agency worked with its own timesheet. Paper timesheets have now been replaced by a standardized digital version, the SETU standard, and considerable costs are now being saved in the branch”, according to Folmer. “The same applies to the processing of waste on the introduction of DIFTAR. Citizens pay for the waste they dispose of and the quantities must be properly registered. The systems used were not interoperable which meant, for instance, that a lorry in the municipality of Zutphen could not be used for the municipality of Deventer. Not only was this awkward, but it also incurred a lot of additional costs . The STOSAG standard has now been developed for this, so that municipalities can register the waste they collect much more efficiently.”
Quality instrument
There is a distinct lack of information on the quality of standards and how they can be improved to make a more effective and efficient contribution to interoperability. Erwin Folmer’s research focuses on the development of a quality instrument for standards. The objective is that the results of the quality measurement can be used to improve the quality of the standard. There is a real need for a quality instrument of this kind.
Seminar ‘The quality of semantic standards’
On Thursday 5 April 2012, TNO, UT and CTIT (the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology), the UT’s ICT research institute, are organizing a seminar on interoperability, semantic standards and quality. The seminar will take place prior to, and in honour of, the conferment of Erwin Folmer’s PhD. The speakers are Hans Wanders (CIO Randstad), the chairperson of SETU, Michiel Westerhoff (Circulus), chairperson of STOSAG and Robert Stegwee (UT), chairperson of Health Level Seven (HL7) Nederland. Click here for more information.
