PDEC Technical Documentation Group (TH3G)

From IIW

Session Topic: PDEC Technical Documentation Group (TH3G)

Convener: Markus

Notes-taker(s): Judi Clark

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Notes URL: http://digitalidcoach.com/2011/10/iiw-xiii-pdec-technical-documentation-group/

Markus pointed out that the purpose of PDEC is to help coordinate and educate, facilitate dialog in the system. Most of our current work is on the legal and business level, and also needs to happen on technical level. PDEC is trying to catalyze the ecosystem. One of the important promises of the ecosystem is the interoperability; needs some technical work/agreement/understanding. We’re not about setting standards, we’re about discovery, conversation, documentation. Technical profiles of the different projects, what exposed schemas and APIs, how it’s exposed, what strategies are in use.

Proposal to collect a set of questions that will help inform the dialog:

  • data model/schema for personal data
  • technology endpoints: API, network protocols, interface
  • what do they offer: query, import/export, update, delete
  • technology for protecting privacy/control: cryptography?
  • client support: mobiles? desktop? browser plug-ins?
  • developer resources: libraries? wikis?
  • notion of identity: un/pw?
  • architecture: centralized? open?
  • data portability

Interoperability:

  • What’s required to establish interoperability?
  • What’s in their future plans?
  • Can your project work with someone else’s project?

Documentation steps:

1. Document technical profile — with temporal attribute (what tech now, what changes coming?)

2. Interoperability: do you have interoperability with another member of the ecosystem? or planning to do?

3. (TBD)

Proposal suggested that we put a set of questions up and propose member organizations post responses (RSS or other) to help “cat herding” of the information. Proposal suggested to organize info in three columns: name, tech keywords, brief description. Proposal to pre-define businesses (personal data store) then differentiate between those companies/projects. Some questions won’t apply equally to all companies in the startup circle.

Survey Examples (does this format work?):


Technology	        Personal.com	        Locker Project	     Gluu/SAML appliance
Data model/schema   |	own schema (gems)	x	             x
Tech for sharing    |	RDF endpoints, oAuth?	x	             XDI, LDAP, SAML for federation
Protecting privacy/ |          x	        x	             x
controls	    |
Client support	    |          x	        x	             x

Need to do more thinking on how to collect/organize this information.