DLM Forum’s triennial conference 2011: day 1

12 December 2011

Setting the Scene: DLM Forum 2011 in Context

•  Professor Julie McLeod, Head of Research, Northumbria University and DLM

Julie McLeod described the context of this DLM Conference by presenting the audience various views on the meaning of intelligent information control. It being the subtitle of the DLM Forum Conference on Interoperability & MoReq2010.

She did so by asking within the  Northumbria University what meaning intelligent information control should mean. Replies were plentiful and colourful: control, by some respondent, should actually mean access, thus touching on the delicate issue of privacy when talking about  interoperability. By another intelligent information control should be about providing for individual needs: information when I want and however I want. Someone else felt that it is about efficiency and cost reduction, while a different party thought it was a meaningless set of words. Intelligent information control could thus be considered meaningless, but at the same time be defined as an utopian concept. This definitely set the scene for the conference.

After her introduction McLeod talked about two UK initiatives that involved intelligent information control. First the NHS attempt to build a top down cooperation portal was described. This initiative which in many ways seems to be similar to the Dutch Electronic Patient Dossier however was deemed to be too complex and is now being dismantled into modular components. Sounded familiar as well.

Secondly she discussed the JISC digital infrastructure for higher education aimed to share information between researchers. Here again I found that similar projects could be found in the Netherlands such as DANS and the NCDD.

As it turns out projects that aim to achieve interoperability are only so within a certain context. I guess this is only natural, but widespread implementation of the concepts of MoReq2010 could change this or at least facilitate such a transnational interoperability.


Her presentation can be downloaded from the DLM website.