[Sigia-l] coat hangers, umbrellas, and standards

[Ed Housman]

It hurts us all when things are not compatible.  This was the problem I was
working on when I was at MITRE ... military information systems were developed
in a parochial manner to meet specific (my special) needs without enough
consideration of what would happen when all these systems go to war and have to
work together.

We may be seeing the same thing happinging when websites merge or suddenly have
to work together.

We tried establishing data standards in the defense department, and that only
helped a little because every agency and service had their own subtle
difference in the meaning of things, and the name used for the data item.  Even
simple things like a location could not be passed cleanly from one system to
another.

Is there something that SIGIA and sigia-l can do?  Perhaps there are small
areas that we can adopt and push to make industry standard modules..

--Ed

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