The eFramework people have published their technical model here: http://www.e-framework.org/Resources/TechnicalModel/tabid/1008/Default.aspx The model depends on continuing feedback from the community. Their aim is to develop “… a common approach to the description of service-oriented design and analysis,” and provide “… a neutral means to articulate the design of software services” in order “…to assist international education and research agencies and communities in planning, prioritising and implementing IT infrastructure more effectively.”
This is a good aim. So, the question is, does it? They want the framework to assist in strategic planning, but it is hard to see how to make the step from the more or less technical abstract layers up to the policy implementation layers. There is still an exclusive, jesuitical (exegetical, hermeneutic) gap, largely inaccessible to lay people, that needs to be interpreted. You have to learn the language.
I see three broad directions of problematics:
1) commercial solution providers will continue to do what they do with reference to their own quasi-standards that may or may not map onto the eframework
2) SMTs will still seek to manage IT risk through contracts rather than technical standards.
3) at each layer there are many elements that may or may not be required and may or may not have concrete implementations. While this does truly reflect the real world, I wonder if there is not so much rool for interpretation that nearly any service could be argued to conform with the letter, if not the spirit of the endeavour.
I will try to become more familiar with the model and understand its implications for institutional innovation and user engagement and look forward to the conversation.
rWorld2 