Introduction
Mission
Strategic Goals
Strategic Actions
Conclusion

Introduction

This document has been approved by the OASIS Board of Directors to explain the OASIS mission and the current strategy for accomplishing it. Its audience includes current OASIS members, prospective members, and anyone else using or affected by OASIS standards. This strategy covers goals spanning three to five years. It is subject to change at any time.

OASIS Mission

The mission of OASIS is “To drive the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society“. The corresponding tag line is “Advancing open standards for the information society".

This mission shapes the policies, processes and programs that directly affect OASIS members, and also affects how OASIS works with non-member constituents. Non-members include organizations or individuals that comment on proposed or existing standards, and that implement or recommend their use.

OASIS has a distinctive character that contrasts with other standards organizations:

• The OASIS technical agenda is set by its members, who are free to start, and advance efforts to meet the needs of the marketplace; this is in contrast to organizations where direction is centrally managed.
• OASIS governance is responsive to the members – half of the Board (apart from the OASIS President) are elected each year by the members for two-year terms, allowing the members to indicate annually the direction they would like to see OASIS go. Likewise, OASIS Committee chairs are elected by Committee members through an open, democratic process. This differs from organizations where Board participation and working group leadership are tied to financial contribution, corporate standing, or staff appointment.
• OASIS encourages but does not mandate convergence. This enables adoption to take place by reducing barriers caused by duplicate, contradictory and inconsistent concepts and specifications. OASIS values creativity and consensus over conformity and control, leaving it to groups of members who voluntarily agree to coordinate their standards development to ensure more convergence or to the marketplace to evaluate overlapping efforts and determine the viability of any given approach. This is in contrast to assigning a single working group to address a standardization topic.
• OASIS draws on a diverse membership base that spans industries and geographies, where researchers and practitioners, vendors and users, government agencies and academic institutions, individuals and multi-national corporations all come together; many other standards bodies only represent the interests of homogeneous communities.

We acknowledge that while OASIS's unique characteristics enable diversity and innovation; these characteristics also may increase the risk of confusion in the marketplace and hesitation in adopting standards. The intrinsic challenge for OASIS is to find an optimal balance between fostering organic development, maintaining quality of approved work, and bringing the advantages of the open process to bear on all deliverables to encourage implementation of ratified OASIS Standards. OASIS will continue to refine its processes and experiment with new programs to facilitate a suitable balance.

Strategic Goals

Four strategic goals guide OASIS in achieving its mission:

1. Continually strive to provide the most effective, efficient, open and transparent environment for the development, coordination, and maintenance of high quality standards.

   An excellent OASIS environment is essential to retain existing membership, attract prospective members and create positive word-of-mouth marketing. Openness and transparency of process are basic principles of OASIS.

2. Broaden international representation and diversity of the OASIS membership to ensure that all those affected by standards have a voice in the collaborative process.

   Special emphasis is placed on increasing participation from end users, including governments, academic and research institutions, as well as the open source communities. This enhances the value and usability of OASIS work in the marketplace.

   Increasing the participation of government and academic institutions serves the OASIS membership by enabling requirements, policy and technology sharing among government, academic and industry constituents. This results in higher quality and more relevant results from OASIS member activities.

3. Support all stages of the standards lifecycle, including requirements definition, specification development, best practices advocacy, and adoption services.

   Each OASIS Committee may choose to address all or part of the standards lifecycle as appropriate for its goals and the needs of the market.

4. Cultivate productive relationships with policy setters, analysts, and decision makers affected or potentially affected by OASIS work, in order to (a) remain receptive to external input, (b) evangelize the accomplishments of our members, (c) advocate the values of the open standards process, and (d) ensure our work remains relevant within the broadest possible context.

   This includes liaisons and outreach to the public sector, international organizations, industry groups, academia, and specific constituencies such as open source developers.

Strategic Actions

The mission and strategic goals of OASIS will be driven through action, specifically the strategic actions outlined in this section. More detail on each strategic action is in the OASIS execution plan used to guide the OASIS staff and the organization.

1. Review and improve alignment of the organizational structure and tools provided to OASIS members with mission and strategic goals.(Relates to goal #1)

   OASIS recognizes the importance of industry verticals and end-user communities to OASIS, for the adoption and deployment of OASIS standards, for broader recognition of OASIS, and for bringing useful requirements and areas of work to OASIS. OASIS will revise the organizational structure to meet the requirements of these areas. One area for consideration is structures that support coordination among multiple committees and support for longer-lived areas of work.

   OASIS is continuously improving the effectiveness of its organization, processes, and services. This includes improvements to the technical infrastructure, IPR policy, TC process, and member services. Feedback from members and work from the Technical Advisory Board are included in the process. This directly relates to the goal of making OASIS an effective environment and indirectly promotes it as a desirable place to conduct standards work to non-members and other stakeholders.

   Examples of possible specifics include improvements in the areas of:

   • Document management,
   • TC process support tools, and
   • Collaborative tools

2. Increase membership outreach and support in under-represented areas. (Relates to goal #2)

   OASIS recognizes the reality of the internationalization and localization of technology and the importance of supporting our members throughout the world.

   This requires a variety of actions, including modification of the OASIS IT infrastructure and TC process to support international membership, and increase the worldwide presence of OASIS.

   Examples of possible specifics:

   • Regional Office program targeting Europe and Asia,
   • Translation of OASIS standards and documents,
   • Localization of OASIS web pages and collateral,
   • Technology transfer with academia.
     
     

3. Expand support for the standards lifecycle to include requirements and adoption activities. (Relates to goal #3)

   Work to increase the involvement of the OASIS community in requirements and exploratory activities as well as activities to increase adoption of standards.

   An adoption services program enables end-users, including OASIS members and non-members, to more readily make use of OASIS standards, through education, demonstration, testing and other activities. Adoption services are designed to increase confidence and interoperability of the standards.

   Adoption services may address the goals of supporting a broader OASIS membership, making OASIS an efficient environment and supporting the full range of the standardization lifecycle.

4. Educate the community (press, members, non-members) on the advantages of the OASIS process, the status of OASIS activities and the benefits of approved OASIS standards. (Relates to goal #4)

Conclusion

This document is part of the ongoing effort of OASIS to provide visibility to its members, consistent with the use of member reviews to approve standards, and OASIS has a number of mailing lists for members and non-members to provide feedback to the OASIS staff and Board of Directors. We welcome your inputs, suggestions and ideas on the OASIS strategy so we can improve and better align it to the needs of the membership. If you have any comments, please send them to strategy-comment@oasis-open.org.

Please note that this strategy document is a snapshot of an ongoing effort and is subject to change. It was approved by the OASIS Board of Directors on 27 September 2007.