1. SISAI STATISTICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE AND INTEGRATION
WORKING GROUP 3rdMEETING MAY 2013 ITEM 2.3 Sharing software of interest to the ESS

2. Sharing software of interest to the ESS
SISAI 3 Meeting
14th of May 2013
BRUNO Mauro (ISTAT)
MIKLIC Miran (Statistics Slovenia)
GROFILS Denis (Eurostat)

3. Content Context Software of interest to the ESS? Software catalogue
Sharing scenarios
Sharing software use
Sharing software development
Software quality evaluation
Possible implementation steps
Request to SISAI
Q&A

4. Context (1/2)
Software represents an important part of the assets of the ESS
€€€: Develoment, licensing fees, deployment, training, …
Interoperability
Data quality, comparability
ESS efficiency gain through increase in level of collaboration in the area of software use and development
ITDG  SISAI  ESS TF:
Linked iniatives: SAB, ISA, …

5. Context (2/2)
The possibility to share software among institutions of the ESS represents several advantages, notably:
Increase efficiency and reduce costs by avoiding multiple developments of virtually the same products by different organisations
Increase harmonization and interoperability through the use of standard software building blocks
Improve quality of data through the use of widely accepted and validated software building blocks and improve comparability among data coming from different countries
Increase the level of collaboration and resource sharing between members of the ESS
 This can be enabled by appropriate policy and guidelines
Promoting re-use and extension of existing solutions
Federating users and allowing sharing of experience around common software
Supporting joint development projects

6. Software of interest to the ESS?
1) Used by members of the ESS
2) to support directly activities of the GSBPM
(Generic Statistical Business Process Model)
3) in order to realise the statistical programme of the ESS
Independent of:
The type of execution environment
Operating system, Run-time system (e.g. scripts), Host application (e.g. plug-ins)
The type of interface(s)
Command-line interface (CLI), Graphical user interface (GUI), Application programming interface (API)
The configuration of application components with regard to the use of computer network
Local or remote

7. Software catalogue (1/2)
Registers information about software meeting the 3 criteria defining software of interest
 Concerns published installation packages not running instances of software!
Conceptually conformant with ADMS SW 1.0
(ISA initiative, see
Hierarchical list
2 sets of catalogue information
Minimal set of information for unshared software
Extended set of information for shared software
+ Information request procedure for unshared software

8. Software catalogue (2/2)
The software catalogue create a link between software user and software provider

9. Sharing scenarios Sharing software use
USE: Sharing at the level of the use of software of interest to the ESS
Release of existing software as OSS
DUMP: Application "as it is", no further development, no support. In that case some activities (albeit limited) are still necessary in order to release the application as OSS.
START: With maintenance and/or with further development
Adaptation of existing OSS
JOIN: As a contribution to the original software extending its feature set
FORK: As a new open source software based on the original one
 Role of software catalogue!!

10. Sharing software use
If there is more than one ESS-member using given software, an ESS user community should be created around the software.
 Online user forum with group management, news items, etc.
The ESS software catalogue is used to identify software for which more than one ESS members is a user
At least those topics are discussed at the level of user communities:
Practices and realizations in the use of the software
Known bugs and workarounds
Features and extensions that could be interesting for the community

11. Sharing software development (1/3)
Based on a schematic view of software development
Recommendations per cycle-step
Applicability per cycle-step depends on sharing scenario

12. Sharing software development (2/3)
Recommendations
Structure

13. Sharing software development (3/3)
Transparency/publicity as possible
Practical technology-specific best practices and conventions developed by developer communities on collaborative spaces
e.g. coding conventions
Data protection
Identification of risk of statistical disclosure
Explicitly considered during design
Specifically tested
Particular maintenance conditions
Detailed packaging guidelines are included
Consistent with existing Eurostat packaging guidelines
(Guidelines on publishing and sharing existing software as Open Source,
see

14. Software quality evaluation (1/2)
Based on ISO/IEC
Semi-structured user reviews attached to software catalogue entries
Input for ESS quality certification procedure
Possibility of contestation via catalogue maintainer

15. Software quality evaluation (2/2)
Template

16. Possible implementation steps
Gap analysis between:
Catalogue initiatives
Own, shared and commercial software
Formats of data and metadata
Desired and actual quality of the data
Stimulate cooperation on the common projects
Identification of software with high-potential for sharing
Possibility of joining forces for further development of existing projects
Support user communities around shared software
Support developer communities (sharing around software libraries and common modules, development guidelines & how-to's, coding standards, …)
Develop a "shared software wizard" tool implementing the recommendations in an light software for assiting IT project leaders

17. Request to SISAI
SISAI members are asked to comment and propose changes to the draft document and recommend it for ITDG to adopt.

18. Thank you for your attention! Questions?
Q&A
Thank you for your attention! Questions?