Request for support for new STF: Specification of the SAREF development framework and workflow, and development of the Community SAREF Portal for user engagement

Dear all,

We are finalizing the Terms of Reference of a new ETSI Specialist Task
Force (STF): “Specification of the SAREF development framework and
workflow, and development of the Community SAREF Portal for user
engagement”. The Rationale for this new STF is copied at the end of this
mail.

This STF is a continuation of the work started in STF 556 [1] corresponding
to a part of the work that has been postponed from the previous STF budget
allocation

Please consider sending an expression of support for this new STF on behalf
of your institution, by April 26th:

Share your expression of support to: SMARTM2M@list.etsi.org, Enrico
Scarrone <Enrico.Scarrone@telecomitalia.it>, Francisco da Silva <
Francisco.daSilva@huawei.com>, Patrick Guillemin <patrick.guillemin@etsi.org>,
Maxime Lefrançois <maxime.lefrancois@emse.fr>

object: Support for new STF: Specification of the SAREF development
framework and workflow, and development of the Community SAREF Portal for
user engagement

[1] - https://portal.etsi.org//STF/STFs/STFHomePages/STF556

Best,
Maxime Lefrançois
MINES Saint-Étienne
http://maxime-lefrancois.info/


================= Rationale:

ETSI SmartM2M tackles IoT, interoperability, and Semantic Interoperability
challenges, contributing to the digital transformation of industry sectors
in Europe. The SAREF standard ontology is a key flagship to reach semantic
interoperability in IoT and Web-based applications where digitized assets
play a central role. The first version of SAREF (now Smart Applications
REFerence ontology) was published in November 2015 by ETSI TC SmartM2M, and
subsequent extensions are being developed to describe digital assets for
various domains including energy, environment, building, agriculture, smart
city, automotive, wearables, eHealth/ageing-well, water.

The STF 556 (Consolidation of SAREF and its community of industrial users,
based on the experience of the EUREKA ITEA 12004 SEAS project,
https://portal.etsi.org//STF/STFs/STFHomePages/STF556) Published TR 103 608
with requirements for the SAREF ontology portal and the SAREF ontology
publication framework (gather requirements), reinforcing the engagement of
its community of users.

*The value of SAREF is strongly correlated with the size of its community
of users, and also to the agility of the SAREF developers to improve the
SAREF ontology and react to raised issues. As such, SAREF users’ community
and the industry actors need be attracted to SAREF with clear Web
documentation and a clear indication about how to provide their input and
the kind of input that they can provide.*

The ETSI members that contribute to SAREF need to be able to get feedback
from the open community of industrial users, to speed up the evolution of
the current and future extensions, and reduce the costs of developing these
extensions. That being said, the development of SAREF must remain in ETSI's
hands to ensure high quality standards are met. The publication and/or use
of such feedback must therefore be controlled by ETSI, but the possibility
to provide feedback will be open to the world.

*The work in this STF is to specify the SAREF development framework and
workflow to speed up the development of SAREF and its extensions, and to
develop the ETSI software that will be used to generate the ontology portal
content from the sources of SAREF on the forge. Furthermore this ontology
portal will include interaction capabilities (feedbacks and bug reporting,
etc) to enable the SAREF community of users to provide their feedbacks and
proposals.*

*The final vision is to make the business community able to provide their
input to SAREF and to maintain SAREF without the need of a special support
from ETSI, but just with a revision from the ETSI members, and in
particular from SmartM2M.*

*The tool in its instantiation is made for SAREF at first, but in the
future can be used by other TBs for other ontologies.*