Standards Committee Teleconference 2009 01 07

Standards Committee Teleconference Call Notes

Drafted by Joe Andrieu, January 7, 2009

Other Calls

Category:Standards Committee Teleconferences

Attendees

• Joe Andrieu
• Iain Henderson

Agenda

1. Spring VRM Workshop
2. External Projects in need of standards
3. VRM Standards Project Leads
4. VRM Standards Criteria http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc4jjg2j_141htc37p97&hl=en
5. Organization
   1. Liberty
   2. VRM.org

Notes

We talked about the future of VRM and this standards committee. Both Iain and Joe think we need a change of mode with the VRM effort, something to move us into a new way of working together.

The progress of this committee wasn't quite what Joe had hoped for. Largely, we believe, because the standard we started with, the Personal Address Manager, had no for-profit motive behind it and no funding from the rest of the community. The result was that too often it was pushed to the backburner by folks responsible for making it happen. We made some progress, advanced a lot of VRM thinking, but as a standard, we doubt it'll get much further until someone with a profit-motive steps up to make it real.

VPI as exemplar

Iain has such a motive behind the VPI initiative, now a SIG at Liberty. After a bit of conversation, we broke his standards-driven interests into a few areas. I had asked "What areas would you like to see standards in, as a business strategy for your company?" (Note that MyDex is a community investment corp, not a standard for-profit, but it is Iain's venture, and as such is fueling a good part of his interest and attention in VRM.)

1. Personal data architecture--a schema and logic for keeping track of a large number of data points about the typical individual and their transactions with vendors.
2. Flows within CRM and with a CRM system--a sort of OSI stack model for talking about the parts of a customer relationship system. VRM will need to integrate and fit into a model like this. Having a standard model lets all of us share terminology and develop a shared understanding of the challenges and solutions.
3. VPI or Volunteered Personal Information
   1. A clear understanding of the value exchange between individuals and companies
   2. Open standards for working code--real, actual systems implementing VPI controls on user data
   3. Standard Contracts for individuals asserting their own Tersm of Service at various stages of the relationship
   4. Machine readable, discoverable privacy icons--Visually understandable standard icons so users can easily understand a company's privacy policy, combined at the same time with machine readable aspects of the same, so users (or their agents) can search and do business with companies with the desired privacy rules.
   5. A compliance program to validate that companies are in fact adhering to their privacy icons and the contracts
   6. Housekeeping Seal of Approval for those firms meeting certain quality standards with regard to the use and control of user data.

Standards Criteria

In addition to helping individual projects, like the ListenLog or the SearchMap become more VRM-friendly, I think it is also a good opportunity for this committee to take over the creation and maintenance of the VRM Standards Criteria. These criteria would be able to be applied to any documented standard for a proposed VRM Service. The job of the committee would be to create this list (we already have a good start from work in Mountain View at the last IIW http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc4jjg2j_141htc37p97&hl=en) and then to try it out against proposed standards--or to work with those developing standards to either update the criteria or revise the standard to meet it.

I'll be looking forward to this role in the future. I'm also open to more input from members of the committee about how they see this group making the most of the attention and contributions we have from some smart, capable folks who understand VRM.

Next Meeting

January 21