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Subject: NOAA Undermining International Standards?
Friends -
As you may be aware, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), in a bid to expand its role in national public
warning, is representing its new "HazCollect" all-hazard warning
program as using the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard.
Regrettably, what NOAA is proposing to roll out nationwide in the
next few months is a crippled and incomplete version of the CAP data
format.
If NOAA was a warning system provider like any other, that might be a
minor and ultimately self-correcting glitch. But what NOAA is about
to unwrap is nothing less than a national backbone network for public
warnings of all kinds. The sheer size and scope of the NOAA effort
means there'll be strong pressure on other warning technology
providers to conform to the NOAA-variant specification. That will
leave firms and agencies in the U.S. and abroad that already have
implemented CAP per the international specification at a severe
disadvantage.
Despite numerous requests over the past six months, and spurning
offers of technical assistance and even of funds from local
governments to bring HazCollect into full CAP compliance, the NOAA
officials in charge of HazCollect have stubbornly declined to have
their contractor, the Battelle Memorial Foundation, make the
relatively minor--by their own admission--adjustments required for
full CAP compliance.
Regrettably, we can no longer ignore the possibility that NOAA is
trying deliberately to drive a wedge between implementers and the
international standards process. One reason might be that the
restrictions NOAA is trying to impose on CAP serve to mask serious
and long-standing shortcomings in existing warning systems, including
ones operated by NOAA.
But we don't need to speculate about motives to see that we are at a
crossroads for the adoption of open standards by the U.S.
Government. If federal agencies start to rewrite science-based
consensus standards by dint of raw administrative muscle, that will
leave the technology market at the mercy of unrestrained
bureaucracy. It will inflict huge costs on industry and the public
and be an enormous setback for international humanitarian relief and
the global war on terror.
It's too bad that quiet diplomacy was unable to resolve this before
it became public. However, with the national deployment of
HazCollect's "initial operating capacity" just weeks away, it's time
for the standards community to take a stand for standards compliance
and transparency.
Therefore, speaking as the original architect and editor of the
Common Alerting Protocol, I'm calling on the OASIS Emergency
Management Technical Committee and its members to demand that
HazCollect not be declared operational until its CAP implementation
is complete and fully compliant with the published specifications.
Our integrity is being tested now. Either we stand up for open, non-
proprietary standards or we stand by as our work becomes a stalking-
horse for narrow institutional interests. I'm confident that the
agencies, organizations and individuals who've invested so much hard
work in standards development over the last few years won't let that
work be distorted or dismissed.
- Art
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