20210713 Scientific Board meeting minutes

Owned by Hilde Orten (Unlicensed)
Jul 19, 2021
4 min read

Present: Ingo Barkow, Darren Bell, Franck Cotton, Jared Lyle, Hilde Orten, Flavio Rizzolo, David Schiller, Carsten Thiel, Wendy Thomas, Joachim Wackerow

 Apologies: Simon Hodson

 Agenda topics:

1. Presentation of new Working Groups 

a.       Paradata

b.       XKOS

David Schiller and Franck Cotton presented the recently officially approved Working Groups: The Paradata group (David), and XKOS (Franck).

Please find David and Franck’s presentations at the Scientific Board’s Confluence page, under ‘Contributions from the Working groups’, ‘For the SB meeting of July 13th’.

2. Short report from meeting ‘Dissemination of contextualized statistical information (DDI-CDI - NGSI- LD interoperability)' of July 12th

Franck reported about a meeting held July 12th, between DDI Alliance representatives and NGSI-LD representatives, to explore the subject of interoperability between the NGSI-LD and DDI-CDI. NGSI-LD is an Interstat project, involving Interstat, Insee, Engineering and the Fiware foundation. One objective is to facilitate dissemination of statistical data via the Context Broker (CEF-CB). This would allow to disseminate statistical data in a way that can be both contextualized (e.g. in time and space) and interoperable with other sources, statistical or otherwise. The core specification for the Context Broker is NGSI-LD, an ETSI standard which is also the de facto standard for context information (IoT, Smart Cities, etc.). The meeting on the 12th agreed to collaborate on exploring interoperability between NGSI-LD and DDI-CDI.

David and Franck left the meeting after their presentations and a short discussion. Thanks a lot for your contributions, David and Franck!

3. Admin

a.       Report from the Annual Meetings, follow-up on approval of the Scientific Plan, comments on how to organize the members meeting next year.

The presentation of the Scientific Plan at the meeting of the Scientific Community went well. No feedback was received regarding to make changes to the plan.

 At our presentations at both annual meetings, the SB announced that there would be a member’s vote for the plan, after the plan had been agreed upon at the meeting of the Scientific Community.

Regarding the approval of the plan by the members two concerns arose:

-The Executive Board will send out the Strategic Plan for member’s comments, but not for vote, and we feel it would be good that the same approach is used for both plans.

-July and August are vacation months, and we would need 50% percent positive response, which might be hard to achieve during the vacation time.

Ingo and Hilde together with Jared therefore decided to use the same approval procedure for the Scientific Plan as is used for the Scientific Plan. New procedures for the Annual Meetings and for the approval of the Scientific Plan should be considered for next year.

 We note that one Working Group was not happy that the content of the Scientific Plan was not discussed with them before it was presented to the Scientific Community and the Members.

The procedures followed by the SB when preparing the Scientific Plan was as follows:

1. Ask the Working Groups to report about their short and medium term plans.

2. Develop the Scientific Plan, including an evaluation and adjustment of the Working Groups’ priorities.

3. Present the report to the Scientific Community and Members, for commenting and approval.

A discussion followed at the meeting. Based on input from Flavio and Carsten, the meeting agreed that due to the deciding role of the Scientific Board, consultation with the Working Groups as a final step before presenting it to the community should not be needed. It was also pointed out that Working Groups still would have the chance to comment on the plan as Scientific Representatives, or as Member Representatives.

However, we realize that the processes regarding the development of the Scientific Plan should be streamlined for the next time, and the ideas and role of the Scientific Board should be clearly laid out, in order to adjust expectations.

b.       Should we have an August meeting? 

Due to vacations among the SB members it was decided not to have an August meeting. The next meeting will be in September.

4. DDI URN resolution - Status update - goals and policies to be formed 

Achim presented the status of the DDI URN resolution, and gave ideas for the way forward. See the presentation here. DNS NAPTR record request for ddi.urn.arpa is approved. This was the final step to build the basis for a DNS-based resolution of DDI URNs.

The DNS-based resolution approach can in short be describes as follows:

A DNS query on a DDI URN is delegated to the DDI Alliance server (http://registry.ddialliance.org ). The server could answer two-fold:

  1. Centralized approach: The DNS server of the DDI Alliance provides a list of available DDI services like resolution of DDI URNs to URLs. Prerequisite: central resolution service.

  2. De-centralized approach: Delegation of the query to a DNS server of a registered DDI agency.

The DNS server of the DDI agency provides a list of available DDI services like resolution of DDI URNs to URLs. Prerequisite: resolution service per DDI Agency.

A discussion followed regarding which of these would be the best solution, or if a mixed approach would be a good idea? Perhaps one agency would be willing to do a pilot for option 2.? The CV as a sub- agency of the DDI Alliance was mentioned in this context.

It was decided to form a temporary working group that will develop a proposal for high level goals goals and policies regarding the resolution of DDI URNs and to describe which kind of related technical services would be needed. As such a proposal basically is a strategic decision and would possibly require some resources, a decision of the Executive Board regarding the implementation of the proposal might then be necessary.

The TC has started to look at technical details, where the HTTP resolution service has been approved funding. These components can serve as building blocks in the resolution structure, as depending on the recommendations of the temporary working group.

Ingo and Hilde will take steps regarding the forming of the temporary working group for the DDI URN resolution.

5. Meetings with the community (Postponed till next meeting)

a.       Quarterly meetings with the Working groups - plan

b.       Meetings with the Scientific Community - ideas