Gregory Maciag

Connected Cars

Catherine Smola at CSIO makes excellent points about the value of data standards for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. She pinpoints many of the benefits to drivers – or, with the dawn of driverless cars, perhaps we'd better just call them car occupants.

She also notes the immense potential for systemic improvements, such as these: “With access to standardized data collected from hundreds or thousands of vehicles, insurers and engineers can advocate for improved road design in that area even if individual drivers do not report the danger. V2V communications standards may enable the coordination of efforts between the insurance industry, highway agencies, infrastructure authorities and consumer organizations alike.”

The key here is coordination. We're moving beyond the situation where individual organizations act according to partial information. Like drivers, organizations can only react to what they see around them. Just as satellite navigation systems and real time traffic data are giving drivers an “overhead” view, so V2V data will provide a whole-system picture of our transportation infrastructure in action. That means better, faster, clearer, and cheaper roads for everyone.   Connected Cars

Recognizing the Need for Standards

Twenty states are getting together to agree data standards for non-degree credentials such as industry certifications. This is a good example of how data standards emerge from the needs of a network.

In fact, the need to create standards is a sign of the emergence of a network that's conscious of itself as a network. Huh? What I mean is, a bunch of organizations have typically been working together with a common aim for some time before they realize they have the same goals, are not communicating efficiently, and can improve their effectiveness by agreeing data standards.

This is why it's hard to “impose” data standards from the outside. You can promote the value of data standards and explain the benefits. But the people you're addressing need to have an awareness of their common cause. This recognition is often swamped by distrust stemming from competitive pressures and good old fear.

Mature communities recognize themselves as bodies with needs in common – even where they also compete. They register the symptoms of poor communications, slow processes, and systems that are resistant to change. And they see the remedy: industry standards.   Data Standards for Workforce Credentials

The Future is About Flow

People who work in data standards often come from the database world or from business analysis. As the incredible power of data and its absolute centrality to business performance become ever more obvious, so the need to root standards in the business is becoming more acute. Standards are everybody's business.

We need to look more widely for our standards leaders, promoters, consultants, and auditors. The kinds of people we need are everywhere across the business. They're the people who ask why processes are done differently in different parts of the organization. (Heck, they're the people who use words like “processes”.) They're the people who get antsy about information lying around not being used. They're the people who are eager to share the new, improved way they've developed of getting something done.

In a nutshell, our future data standards people are our natural process mavens. These are the people with the real passion for exploiting data to the maximum, even if they don't know it.

The future is about flow. Information needs to flow. Data standards enable flow. Those who have process vision will see data standards as a great tool in improving the flows they already care about.

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Life Insurance Industry & Technology

KPMG International has prepared an executive summary of the four papers provided by the following companies in support of the Executive Panel: “How well is the Life insurance industry keeping pace with rapidly changing technology?” The panel included Allianz, Legal and General Group, RGA and Sun Life Financial.  Download Life-insurance-keeping-pace

ISO (International Standards Organization)

What is a standard?

A standard is a document that provides requirements, specifications, guidelines or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose. We published over 19 500 International Standards that can be purchased from the ISO store or from our members.

What are the benefits of ISO International Standards?

ISO International Standards ensure that products and services are safe, reliable and of good quality. For business, they are strategic tools that reduce costs by minimizing waste and errors, and increasing productivity. They help companies to access new markets, level the playing field for developing countries and facilitate free and fair global trade.

Learn more about ISO

Standards and Reasons

I've been listening in on a developer doing a little coding. I stumbled on Ben Lopatin's blog owing to his statement that “conventions are conventions for a reason. It’s okay to do things differently when there’s a solid expected payoff, but that expectation needs to be well grounded.”

Ben relates playing with a new geocoding service. He wanted to switch the order of coordinates given by the service from (latitude, longitude) to (longitude, latitude) because prior experience with a system led him to believe the latter was the GIS standard. It turned out that the system he was familiar with had flipped the normal order for arcane reasons of its own. The rest of the world says latitude, longitude, and that's the standard – one created by convention, not regulation.

It's a small example of how habit and familiarity can trip us up. It's also a good reminder that any convention only looks “right” because we're used to it. For example, it seems natural that we put the dollar sign ahead of the numerals, even though we read and say money amounts as “x dollars”.

I like Ben's takeway. You've got to have a good reason for departing from a standard. Standards have reasons, even if you can't see them.   Geocoding

Globalization of Standards

As citizens press for more data transparency in government, the demand for openness is going global. The Open Contracting Data Standard has credible support and funding. It will enable governments around the world to publish their procurements in a comparable way. Governments are estimated to spend $9.5 trillion every year through contracts.  Supply Management

Business and Technical Standards

Information professionals can sometimes get lost in conversations with technology folks – especially vendors – when the two parties are on slightly different pages when it comes to standards. Or, rather, when they're reading from different books.

This happens when both parties are talking about data standards – but the information guys mean standards at the business level, while the technology guys are thinking about the technical level.

This divergence is at the root at much confusion in information management circles, where proponents of (business) standards seem to hit a brick wall talking with colleagues who are up to their necks in (technical) standards. One side is saying, We need standards! The other side is saying, We got standards!

For example, pretty much every application you can think of that uses medical imaging uses the DICOM standard. Every system is compliant with this robust, detailed standard for image representation and transmission. But “each vendor supports the DICOM standard in its own way, so there’s no uniformity with regard to DICOM tags and how they are used”. Without interoperability of image data at the business level, it's very, very hard to reliably attach an image set to a patient record.

I have a tip for recognizing when you're in one of those cross-purpose conversations, where people are using different conceptions of standards. It's to ask a “Who” question.

For example: “Can your data tell me who this is a picture of?” This will flush out whether the standard in mind is at the technical or business level. Technical standards don't contain entities representing business objects, such as customers.  A simpler “Who” question for this situation is: “Who uses this data?” A blank look will tell you all you need to know.    Merge.com

Body Data

Our understanding of big data today usually only encompasses data consciously generated by people or passively collected by relatively large sensors, such as closed circuit TV cameras. The real explosion in data is going to come from much smaller, and much more numerous, sensors. And a prime site for locating sensors is on – and in – the human body.

Already the trend toward capturing data about steps taken, calories burned, and heart rate, is growing. There are dedicated devices and smartphone apps. The tech companies are competing fiercely to reinvent the wristwatch as a device primarily dedicated to personal data monitoring. The long-stalled category of “wearable computing” is enjoying a new lease of life.

Now scientists have developed a way of creating personalized assemblies of multiple sensors that can be implanted in the body. So, for example, they make a 3D model of your heart using scanning technologies. They then use the model to print a sensor-embedded membrane that exactly fits the surface of your heart. The membrane can then transmit live data about the performance of every part of the organ.

This is one of those ideas that's amazing for about minute – and then seems obvious. Surely everybody should have one of these as soon as it's safe and practical to do so. And that's just the heart... There's an awesome number of substances, rates, shapes, and relationships within the body that could be emitting data.

Making use of all this data is something else. The line between data collection and health improvements may be long and complex. But with sensor technology improving in leaps and bounds, this is surely the next frontier for data.   Wired