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

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

Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2014 14:53:53 UTC