Standards Process Review

The IVOA aims to be responsive to community feedback: for example, the new Operations Interest Group serves as a focal point for discussions about the implementability and running of IVOA protocols. In recent months, the IVOA standards process has received a number of comments:

• Significant comments on a standard are coming in after the official RFC period has ended
• It is unclear what a reference implementation is, e.g, do they implement all aspects of a standard, or who should be implementing it
• How much of the standard should a validator test and who validates the validator?
• The standards process is too slow to meet community schedules
• Standards need to be better informed by implementation as part of the design process

In response to these, the IVOA Exec has decided to commission a timely review of it. For those attending the Sydney Interop, there will be a plenary session to solicit community feedback on the successes and shortfalls of the existing procedures. For those unable to attend and/or who would prefer to submit written comments, you can:

• attach text to this wiki page below
• email them to Matthew Graham and Francoise Genova if you would prefer to remain anonymous

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Comments on the standards process

Additional information

A new version of the Document Standards (V2.0) was prepared following the discussion. It does not intend to solve all the problems identified above but to somehow smooth the process (in particular by merging the RFC and TCG review), as well as to implement Endorsed Notes and Errata. The RFC page is here.