Re: Significant German document claims: Interoperability of social networking instances is "almost impossible"

Hi Andreas,

I don't read German (to my shame) but this is an interesting angle. A large
group of Dutch civil servants built themselves a network on Elgg, an open
source community project I used to run, and the applications for
decentralized tech here are obvious. What if each department could run its
own space, etc?

A government that wanted to test decentralized social tech in practice
could do so this year: the apps and technologies are all there. The
benefits for any group that chose to do so would be great, as the pilot
would be highly cited.

It would be interesting to challenge the assumptions in the paper with
working code.

Ben
On Aug 20, 2014 7:54 AM, "Andreas Kuckartz" <a.kuckartz@ping.de> wrote:

> In February 2014 the renowned German research institute "Fraunhofer
> FOKUS" and the "Deutsche Universität für Verwaltungswissenschaften
> Speyer" published this document (190 pages):
>
> EIN SOZIALES NETZWERK ALS INTERNES KOMMUNIKATIONSMITTEL FÜR DIE
> ÖFFENTLICHEN VERWALTUNG
> Lena-Sophie Müller, Saskia Fritzsche, Heiko Hartenstein, Stefanie Hecht,
> Elisabeth Krämer, Hermann Hill
>
> http://isprat.net/fileadmin/downloads/projektabschlussberichte/ISPRAT_Projekt_Abschlussbericht_SNOEV.pdf
>
> The 190 page document is quite interesting regarding legal and cultural
> issues and even some technical topics. But unfortunately it is mostly
> ignorant regarding technical work which has already been done to enable
> the creation of decentralized social networks.
>
> A result of this is that the document states on page 140/141:
>
> "Die Integration zwischen zwei Instanzen unterschiedlicher
> technologischer Basis ist für soziale Netzwerke nahezu unlösbar."
>
> In other words: Decentralized social networks based on standards are
> almost impossible. The W3C, OStatus, XMPP etc. are not even mentioned in
> the document.
>
> This is unfortunate because the target audience consists of influential
> people within public administrations in Germany and the main proposal of
> the authors is that a social network is created for the people working
> in public administrations in Germany by those public administrations.
>
> I am preparing a mail to the authors and the German "IT Planungsrat"
> explaining why decentralization of social networks is not only possible
> but well established and necessary - and pointing them to the W3C Social
> IG.
>
> If others here are able to read German they might want to have a look at
> the document and contact me.
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas
>
>