The OASIS Process for Structured Information Standards
by Jon Bosak
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Pages: 1, 2, 3
Important Features of the Process
Even though it is explicitly a placeholder, the interim process has some interesting features that will almost certainly carry over into the long-term version.
First, all the TC mail lists are publicly visible. This is substantially different from the policies regarding the visibility of working group mail lists in some other organizations.
Second, while the agreement to attend meetings necessarily restricts the voting membership of TCs, any OASIS member or employee of an OASIS member organization can subscribe to any OASIS TC mail list at any time and can contribute to discussions on that list. So while in form a TC consists of a small number of members and a much larger number of observers, it can just as easily be looked at as a large mail list whose discussions are collected and ratified by a group of appointed voters. Which view is more appropriate depends on the level of meaningful contributions on the list by the nonvoting members. This structure allows a large number of "designated lurkers" to track and comment upon the work of a TC while guaranteeing the dedicated involvement of a group of appointees who can meet the quorum requirement and thus provide a legal foundation for the process.
Since every TC mail list is publicly visible, there is, of course, nothing to hinder the open discussion of OASIS TC work in public forums open to everyone.
Another feature of the OASIS process is that voting membership within committees is by the individual and not by the organization. This gives OASIS an interesting bicameral quality, not unlike the relationship between an upper and a lower house of parliament or the Senate and House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress. Basic OASIS corporate policy decisions and elections of the board of directors are by vote of the organizational members of OASIS, but the committee votes that determine the design of the standards produced by the TCs are made by individuals. This means that individual OASIS members have exactly the same status within TCs as employees of large vendors and big XML customers, while the big players retain just enough influence over the overall direction of the organization to keep them paying substantial organizational dues, thus subsidizing the lower rates for individuals.
The Process Advisory Committee
As already noted, the PAC is working between now and the XML Europe conference in June 2000 to define a more sophisticated committee structure that will scale to an indefinitely large number of TCs and will provide for the automatic addition and removal of members. While the PAC is not a TC (it lives one level up, a sibling of the ACTC), its mail list is nevertheless open to public view at http://www.xml.org/archives/workprocess/maillist.html and the mail list can be joined by any OASIS member or employee of an OASIS member organization.
The current membership of the PAC is as follows:
Terry Allen, Commerce One Jon Bosak, Individual member, PAC Chair Robin Cover, Isogen Eduardo Gutentag, Sun Microsystems Debbie Lapeyre, Mulberry Technologies, PAC Secretary Tommie Usdin, Mulberry Technologies Lauren Wood, SoftQuad
Though appointed by the board of directors rather than the ACTC, the PAC was formed by basically the same process sketched out above. These are the people from among the two dozen members of the workprocess mail list who were willing to commit to the meeting schedule.
At this writing, the PAC is about a fourth of the way into the design of the long-term process. A recent issues list can be found at http://www.xml.org/archives/workprocess/msg00094.html.
A copy of the first set of issues to be formally decided by the PAC appears as "Design Principles for OASIS Committee Process" in the minutes of the PAC meeting of 2000.01.20, which can be found at http://www.xml.org/archives/workprocess/msg00073.html.
If you want to track the progress of work on the long-term process for TCs, you are invited to monitor the workprocess archive or, if you are an OASIS member or employee of a member organization, to join the workprocess list.
