How do governmental standards bodies like the United Nations and CEFACT differ from WS-I, OASIS and W3C?
The UN is not really (made up) of vendors. In fact, CEFACT was for a long time hostile to the vendor participation. Countries are members of CEFACT. Delegations from various countries and governmental organisations join CEFACT to advance business standards for the world, and they (send) people as volunteer delegates from their countries.
Now think about what that means. That means clearly you are not really a volunteer delegate because someone has to pay your way to get to the meetings, right? So, occasionally it is a government body, but usually some employer would say: "I think it is worthwhile to have my employee on this standards body because maybe we can find some way to influence the process for our benefits." Everyone has a self-interest here.
So, people join these things and they are funded by companies…But the process is inherently a very slow and parliamentary and rigorous formal process. That's what gives it the credibility, because they really feel they could take the long time (necessary to reach consensus) and people are involved. But the problem is that (relying on) the participation of volunteer delegates from (different) countries does not fit the time constraints of technology companies very well. And so ultimately most companies quit that game and they go straightaway to the W3C or OASIS. That is sort of problem. CEFACT was becoming progressively irrelevant in the '90s as the Internet was happening because it did not move fast enough.
A New York Times article from February cited people who complained about Microsoft paying the travel expenses for UN technical committee members, which apparently gave it undue influence over the standards process. Is that common?
I think it is a brilliant idea to try to influence the direction of the one legitimate standards body out there. But the problem is (Microsoft) did it in a way that does not look good with the lights turned on. I mean, everyone tries to influence the process, everyone funds different people to participate in these activities -- that is just how the game is played. Someone has to pay the salary for people who are delegates. It is just Microsoft apparently didn't try to do it in a way that is very transparent. And that is the problem.
No one should be upset about the fact that people are trying to influence the direction of standard bodies -- that is what people do. It is just that the one legitimate standards body left now looks like it is being contaminated by things which do not look quite right.
What do you think that a body like the United Nations can do to cut down on this issue of influence?
An awful lot of people I worked with on ebXML on the UN side as well as the OASIS side were extremely hard-working people who were really committed to the vision of ebXML as the world's e-business standards.
But I think there were a couple of people who are professional standards bureaucrats, who take care of themselves more than they take care of the vision... people who would rather have little empires than advance the cause of world e-commerce and interoperable standards.
