The PhoenX Event
Building management processes for 21st
century Educational Institutions
January 5, 2007
Written
By Paul S Prueitt and Ivan Prueitt
CEOs of Ontologystream Inc and Dawn
Breaker Systems, LLC
One of the definitions of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
The Challenge
In
the following presentation a point of view is expressed about the nature of
difficulties that are commonly found with enterprise software systems such as
accounting systems for school, colleges or universities. We hold that the dysfunction of school
accounting systems has a root cause related to the difference between
computational systems such as web service systems and the natural processes
occurring in the school system. After
this point of view is developed, we present a business opportunity based on a
human in the loop solution. Process
mapping plays a central role in this solution.
Ideally the faculty, staff and administrators of schools should see data processing systems mirror intention directly. This ideal is empowered when software applications and operating systems are developed in a fashion that provides transparency. That is, software should not inhibit or disrupt human activities, missions or purposes. For example, a chemistry teacher plans a lesson but discovers that she does not have the supplies needed. She then pulls out of her drawer a three-part paper form to request the supplies. An event in an abstracted workflow starts a slow path towards getting the supplies. The teacher cannot complete her purpose until the process has been completed. The form is submitted to a person in purchasing. A series of interventions and authorizations is required to complete the requisition. More interventions. The mission/purpose of the teacher is disrupted.
The protocol for accounting and authorizing the request is embedded in a system that delivers a completed requisition to the vendor or distribution center. The goal is to eliminate interventions and delays and enable to teacher to perform her mission. In other words, it is not the mission of the business operations and IT to make the teacher accountable but rather to enable her.
Without transparency into “how” information systems work, an external process often shapes the expectations of the user. In education, the mission and governance statements of universities, colleges and school districts define goals that are not exactly simple. Faculty and staff resist the imposition of an external will from IT vendors who do not understand governance constraints. Often this resistance is not informed by an understanding of the overall scope of natural difficulties in matching social complexity with bureaucratized processes, particularly when those processes are attempted as electronic management.
The historical context is in fact much larger than the context of bureaucratization of those processes needed to support education. Up to now, however, the design of information systems has been left to outside consultants and software vendors.
The historical context is changing. Subtle issues related to modeling natural reality has become clear. New tools for modeling processes have been supplemented by tools for tracking and monitoring real world processes.
Is American education ready for an event that brings renewal and re-alignment to traditional views about education? This question has many parts. The answers are tentative and conditional.
Why software systems are non-complex
As in the classical Business Process Re-engineering activities, the PhoenX Event starts with an AS-IS model of the current situation in education. This situation is mirrored within all parts of the software industry, and represents the greatest challenge to our culture. The core issue is complexity and complicatedness and the confusion of the two.
Academic scholarship has produced a computational paradigm that is a bit confused about the nature of complexity, complicatedness, and computational science. The result is the use of a confusing language in the marketing of software products and consulting services. The simple result is that most software system remains non-agile and complicated.
Traditionally, J2EE developers have had two
choices for transaction management: to use global or local
transactions. Global transactions are managed by the application server, using
JTA. Local transactions are resource-specific: for example, a transaction
associated with a JDBC connection. This choice had profound implications. Global
transactions provide the ability to work with multiple transactional resources.
(It's worth noting that most applications use a single transaction resource)
With local transactions, the application server is not involved in transaction
management, and cannot help ensure correctness across multiple resources.
There is complicatedness as local transactions are asked to perform in ways that are data-interoperable even when exposed to other process that are designed by different groups and from different perspectives.
In the programming literatures, the concept of openness to new facts is treated as if this openness to new information structure, which XML provides, is the same as self-evident openness. Complicatedness found when data systems are not data-interoperable is a completely different phenomenon than complexity. Complicatedness due to data not being interoperable is something that does not lead to a richness of choice, but simply to dysfunction that has to be fixed.
For example, salary schedules are maintained in different spreadsheets. HR has its version and payroll has a separate and not equal spreadsheet. The data models do not match and where matches could be found, the terminology is different. It is complicated to reconcile these two different data models because the final authority for accuracy is political. Salary and compensation transactions are simple when business logic is well defined and processes mapped out.
How might the current situation undergo a transformation? A mature understanding of the natural complexity involved in shifting a viewpoint, or merging two or more viewpoints is required. Transparency is required.
What the markets need is software that recognizes complexity. What the market is getting is data-non-interoperability. The confusion does not yet allow public acknowledgement of a de facto replacement of natural social complexity with highly technical complicatedness due to current IT practices. However, there are clear signs that the public is prepared for a transformational event related to all software products and services.
Our society is becoming more and more aware that software development has a transparency problem. Without clear scholarship on foundational issues, presented in a simple fashion; the public does not have the facts needed to understand why software has become so expensive and controlling. Great progress is made on some fronts but not on others. For example, the OASIS SOA Reference Model touches on the nature of interaction and consequences.
Visibility,
interaction, and effect are key concepts for describing the SOA paradigm. Visibility refers to the capacity for those
with needs and those with capabilities to be able to see each other. This is typically done by providing descriptions
for such aspects as functions and technical requirements, related constraints
and policies, and mechanisms for access or response. The descriptions need to be in a form (or can be transformed to a
form) in which their syntax and semantics are widely accessible and
understandable.
Whereas
visibility introduces the possibilities for matching needs to capabilities (and
vice versa), interaction is the activity of using a capability. Typically mediated by the exchange of
messages, an interaction proceeds through a series of information exchanges and
invoked actions. There are many
facets of interaction; but they are all grounded in a particular execution
context – the set of technical and business elements that form a path between
those with needs and those with capabilities.
This permits service providers and consumers to interact and provides
a decision point for any policies and contracts that may be in
force.
The
purpose of using a capability is to realize one of more real world
effects. At its core, an interaction is
“an act” as opposed to “an object” and the result of an interaction is an
effect (or a set/series of effects). We
are careful to distinguish between public actions and private actions; private
actions are inherently unknowable by other parties. On the other hand, public actions result in
changes to the state that is shared at least between those involved in the
current execution context and possibly shared by others. Real world effects are, then, couched in
terms of changes to this shared world.
The
expected real world effects form an important part of the decision on whether a
given capability matches similarly described needs. At the interaction stage, the description of real world effects
establishes the expectations of those using the capability. Note, it is not possible to describe
every effect from using a capability, a cornerstone of SOA is that we can use
capabilities without needing to know al the details. (Italics made for emphasis.)
Lines 211 – 222
[2]
Our critic of the OASIS SOA Reference Model is made in a context of strong approval of the reference model. The OASIS document properly identifies issues such as the difference between an act (in the natural world) and the performance of an object.
The consequences of using a capability needs transparency and without this transparency the provision of services is blind. So why is the reference model claiming the following?
“a cornerstone of SOA is that we can use capabilities without needing to know all the details”
The answer is due to the software industry’s need to hide how the service is accomplished in the software, and perhaps also by whom the service is to be completed. Historically the IT viewpoint came to be the only viewpoint considered. The viewpoint is that no one other that software designers need to understand how the software works. This historical context shapes the business opportunity to be proposed by shifting focus from lines of business to process models.
International Standard for Modeling Educational Processes
We see the extension of work by Dawn Breaker Systems LLC leading to the specification of architecture, methods, ontology and data objects sufficient to the task to shifting control over education process to educators. A framework is being proposed as a total solution for all education institutions worldwide.
Recent evolution of service and ontology standards by the U. S. Federal CIO Council and other entities has grappled with the question of data interoperability. The concept of web services, semantic web and service-oriented architecture are driving the discussion; and have been instrumental in the publication of a large number of standards. The standards bodies involved include OASIS, W3C, and ISO.
The effort has produced an abundance of standards, and created the opportunity to extract from this work a small set of standards specifically associated with four high level aspects of any education entity; software use, lines of business, process models, and topic models. In the new standard, lines of business and process models are developed separately. Control of education entity behavior may shift easily between accounting based principles and models resulting from mission statements.
This separation is critical and requires two independent models of entity activities, one for financial accountability and one for process definition related to core education and research objectives. Financial accountability will use software developed in a way that does not restrict the processes nominated by school faculty, staff or administration.
In our framework, interaction produces reconciliation activity that is addressed using standards. The process model and topic model have an interaction space where the intentions of educators are measured using folksonomy and Wiki technology. Various viewpoints are developed into topic maps and OWL ontology and then used to re-enforce the presentation viewpoint as a “web-service” to the process modeling developed using workshops. At the present time, we are considering the use of Appian Enterprise technology to produce activity models related to lines of business specific each education entity. Beyond this technology are several generations of technology that simplify and make more powerful the service orientation useful to educators.
The IT industry has evolved on an evolutionary basis, with each new technology generation primarily built upon the former one. Each layer has added complexity to the computing stack making it challenging to adapt to future infrastructure requirements. The emerging Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) layer attempts to move this legacy stack into the networked and knowledge age, but will remain impeded because of the virtually impossible task of managing this complexity in any effective manner. [3] The non-disclosed platform represents a leap forward by providing a Global Context Computing (GCC) infrastructure based upon a new computer science.
We are planning for an international standard based on GCC infrastructure for educational processes, worldwide. A high degree of generality is required, as well as specificity as required by individual institutions. Our planning for this standard is in parallel with our involvement in the development of the primary technology supporting GCC.
Financial accountability will use position-control ontology. This ontology will trace the origin of funding constraints to sources such as legislative intent and philanthropic intent; creating greater clarity on how funding constraints becomes defined. The focus on intent makes the compliance to that intent easier for all concerned by reducing miscommunication and also by allowing active feedback in cases where the educator feels that the funding allocations is problematic. The development of ontology about funding mechanisms and about mission intent from educational leadership works to provide operational transparency.
The standard will be public, and will be used to radically reduce IT costs and to eliminate powerful dependencies between the education community and information technology consultants. Software design elements interface with lines of business using web-service and service oriented architecture standards. Typical software framework disciples are confirmed so that all education entity software is designed using principles and algorithms defined in the international standard. The notion of lines of business is fully developed in U.S. Federal CIO Council sponsored web services and service oriented architecture standards and design principles.
Topic models are seen to interface with process definitions. These topic models are a real time rendering of selected discussions occurring within the scholarly community. The technologies driving the topic models are semantic extraction technology and technology supporting linguistic analysis over complex social discourse, technologies that have become well developed and integrated during the years 2000-2006. Much of this work was done in classified settings, however the principles are clearly seen in public documentation and in the development of technology that is appearing in the private sector.
Results from the topic model production process are dynamic and change from day to day. These results will be made publicly visible via topic maps and OWL ontology specifications.
A specific business opportunity develops by creating a center of activity that extends the work on position control into the full aspects framework. This work is informed by six years of domain specific activity by Dawn Breakers Systems LLC (DBS). The founder of DBS, Ivan Prueitt, is a principal in the business start-up PhoenX Group Inc. The experience he has is being combined with his brother’s experience in ontological modeling and advanced computer technologies.
Our focus of social processes
We envision the development of Digital-Schools to be a social process with a business sub process. The social process includes the discussion of the accountability that schools have to legislative intent and to the formulation of university/college/school mission statements. This issue is often used to justify large expenditures on enterprise software, even through the enterprise software often does not recognize the social complexity of manual tasks.
The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education conducted two district-wide studies, representing eleven colleges, that examined the needs and patterns of data and information access, sharing, and use in two community college districts in California. One of the implications for California community college districts is represented in the following way.
“Understand
the barriers to and history of data use within the district, and create ways to
break through those barriers. Each
district already has a context and history of perceptions about data
collection, dissemination, and use, and these can vary by position within the
organization. It is important to know what these perceptions are, to understand
the extent to which these perceptions are accurate or out of date, and to take
steps to train staff members to collect and use data effectively in their jobs.
An information audit can help to pinpoint the factors that are preventing
effective information access or use on campus: Are the factors related to fears
about technology? Are they grounded in past practices about how data have been
used? Are they based on current limitations in the information system? Knowing
which factors are at play will affect the kinds of training, communications
activities, or implementations that are needed.” [4]
This representation is consistent with many early knowledge management formations about the nature of institutional pull back on making information flow electronic. However, as knowledge management matured, more and more of the knowledge management literature reflected an growing understanding that knowledge flow was more complex than what is assumed in standard information technology deployments. The cause of the push back may be partially justified.
In the next section we introduce a partitioning of the task related to lifting information flow from community based systems into computer based service orientation. The partitioning separates the challenges related to software development and deployments, the identification of well specified lines of business, the modeling of natural processes as they occur independent of computer implementations, and the measurement of the social discourse of those involved in socially complex phenomenon.
High-level explanation of the aspect framework
Due to the maturity of the software paradigms, we may move from the high level aspect of software development and lines of business to the aspects of process models and topic models.
An aspect is a part of something that seems essential.
The use of the term “aspects” has two separate meaning, both correct. First, the construction we outline here, and then develop in detail elsewhere, has four high level aspects:
· Software development,
· lines of business,
· process models, and
· topic models.
This first sense of “aspect” is that these four aspects are aspects of the real world. The complete aspect framework models how these real world elements may interact in an optimal and transparent fashion.
Drawing of the High-level Aspects Framework
The second meaning is contextual within each of these four high level aspects; and changes from one to another. Within each context, the high level aspect is to be seen as having three levels; (1) a substructure level – corresponding to the common notions of “aspect” and “facet”, (2) an object/line-of-business/process-model/topic level, and (3) environmental interface. The details about these three levels within each high-level aspect changes but details have corresponding commonalities that are important to understanding and using the aspects framework.
The Optimality Argument
The argument is made in various technical committees that, in the abstract, the service exchanges should not depend on who and how. However, the technical aspects of “how” a service is accomplished, when optimal, may be objectively known.
We conjecture that transparency over “how” software accomplishes services will drive the software development frameworks into a minimal level of complicated-ness. This minimal level of complicated-ness has not been available up to just recently due to specific mistakes made by academic computer science and re-enforced by the business of software development. However, this past systemic behavior can be seen as being part of the past. Business Process Management development systems, such as the Appian Enterprise system, have developed a new sense of transparency.
The trade off is in the economic value of proprietary knowledge. When this issue of transparency is achieved we see more clearly the larger issue of consequences in the world due to actions taken. Our Global Context Computing work may be coupled with a national Manhattan-type Project dedicated to correcting current information science and to produce a broad agreement in the academy over the principles and applications of a new information science based on increased social transparency.
We are allowed to shift the focus from the technical issues of how data is exchanged. We then are allowed to see, more clearly, short term and long-term consequences of actions taken. The actions are facilitated using service-oriented architectures where the data objects are well specified in public standards.