Here's a small mystery. At the end of August 2015, federal government officials finalized 57 data standards enabling the DATA Act. GitHub – the open source web platform which hosted much of the discussion about the formation of the standards – said: “Notably, Treasury and OMB chose to adopt the proprietary DUNS Number as the favored, government-wide identifier for recipients of federal funds – even though every GitHub comment said they shouldn't.”
What could the thinking be here? Maybe it's that the DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) number is so well entrenched in existing systems that people see no reason to change to something else. If you're looking to standardize, wouldn't you want to preserve any pre-existing standard used across the domain and regard it as a time saving?
I guess the issue here is whether you see the proprietary nature of the DUNS number as a problem or not. For straight serial numbers, I'm not sure I care whether a private or public organization allocates the numbers. It's not as if they can lock anyone out.
I can also see how the adoption of any proprietary element could look like a precedent for favoring proprietary standards in general. But I don't think standards leaders think like this. Using the DUNS number doesn't mean government will lean toward other proprietary standards that potentially distort competition. It's not in anyone's interest. FIERCE
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