Standards to Support National Cooperation in Applying Technology to VET

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4.6 Technology and Standards

Within the overall telecommunications and computer industries, there has been extensive examination of the role of `open' standards. These are generally taken to be standards which are both developed and made available in the public arena. The criteria for Publicly Available Specifications, as required by the IEC and the ISO, contain the following `openness' characteristics:

• Completeness - interfaces are well specified
• Clarity - contextual material is provided to educate the reader
• Testability - conformance/interoperability tests are described
• Stability - mechanisms are in place to track modifications
• Availability.
• The properties of standards that impact upon interoperability within the VET sector are the openness properties listed above and the degree of adoption of the standard in the marketplace.
• The concept of `openness' is attractive because it promotes market growth and efficiency in determining the general standards policy to be applied in the VET sector. The concept of open standards is, however, too coarse-grained to provide practical guidance when practitioners are faced with the choice of particular standards. There are, in fact, many classes of standards, which can be distinguished by their history of development. These classes have different properties which determine the way they add value in the online learning process. These classes of standards, described in Appendix 4, can be listed as shown in Table 2:

Table 2: List of Standards Classes
Mandatory - required by law
Carrier - technically necessary for connection
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Formal - developed by standards body
Quasi-formal - developed by industry forum
Informal - developed by

• volunteers
• an open consortium of companies
• a closed consortium of companies
• a single company

Non-published proprietary

Quasi-formal, informal and non-published proprietary standards which are widely used tend to become refined and adopted as formal standards.
There are some important general relationships between the various technology layers and the ranking of standards. These relationships inform the Standards Policy for the VET Sector stated in Section 4 of this Report, and are shown diagrammatically in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Standards Classes and Overall Properties

As discussed in Section 3.1, the essential function of the telecommunications industry is the establishment of connectivity. In order to achieve this, it is necessary for national administrations to develop internationally agreed standards and enforce them within their jurisdictions. Generally speaking, standards at the infrastructure level have therefore been developed by public processes involving formal standards organisations. The International Telecommunications Union is a prime example. Its membership comprises users of the standards, viz., the telecommunications carriers and suppliers (i.e. equipment manufacturers). Furthermore, these standards are generally few in number, but mandatory. They exhibit a high degree of openness in order to achieve compatibility of telecommunications equipment operating on different networks.

In contrast, at the Applications layer, products and the associated standards arise from commercial processes within a rapidly developing industry sector in the competitive marketplace. The standards are generally developed by proprietary or informal processes. The number of standards in a given field tends to be larger in order to supply the diversity of features required by the fragmented marketplace. Consequently, selection of a particular standard in this class runs the risk that it will not be widely adopted and therefore not support interoperability.

It must be noted that the above discussion indicates general trends only.

The VET Standards policy needs to take into account both supply and demand aspects of standards implementation. It is important to understand that there are supply side factors which impose constraints on the market. Where suppliers have significant market power, the opportunity for buyers to set standards is limited. Examples include the defined but limited range of standards and services supported by the telecommunications carriers and the proprietary products offered by the largest software companies.

On the supply side there is, therefore, a threshold issue: while the VET Sector can influence the commercial aspects of supply of services, it has little opportunity to influence technical standards above the horizontal line in the standards list (Table 2). These mainly include standards at the infrastructure and services level, for online delivery to off campus learners. These standards are set by carriers or by standards organisations in which they participate. They are reflected in the products offered by the carriers. The choice of standard (resulting from a choice of service) is therefore the consequence of a commercial decision based on required functionality in a particular instance and on price. The carrier will then usually ensure that interoperability - end-to-end connectivity - occurs. It is not therefore appropriate to recommend particular standards in the mandatory and carrier classes.

On the demand side it is necessary to determine the particular standards taking into account needs of the VET sector. These comprise:

• Functionality: benefits to particular players in the value chain (Table 1) in implementing the ANTA strategies and overcoming the barriers discussed in Section 2.2. Higher levels of functionality will generally require more feature rich standards, i.e. those towards the bottom of the standards list.
• Interoperability: The challenge for VET is to agree on a common approach which will ensure interoperability with a wide range of remote users in a flexible delivery environment. At the Applications level, this generally involves deciding not to use certain leading-edge technologies until they are widely enough adopted to suit the needs of flexible delivery.
• Low Price: Being more open, standards higher in the list will often support lower cost of implementing online delivery infrastructure. Because they exhibit the public availability features cited above, they will create competitive markets and therefore encourage reduced prices at the appropriate layer of the technology.

4.7 Consequences

1. International trends in telecommunications are leading to an industry of unprecedented diversity. The VET Sector is also changing rapidly; an important development is the increasing autonomy of the participants.
2. There is a risk that this rapid evolution will prejudice the achievements of national objectives for flexible delivery. Just as in telecommunications, where any-to-any connectivity is a key policy objective, standardisation in the VET Sector will enhance the overall efficiency of the sector.
3. The sector needs to identify the areas where it is appropriate to set standards cooperatively and promulgate them within a structured framework.

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