The UK Department of Trade & Industry’s Open Systems Technology Transfer programme – part of its Enterprise Initiative – got off to rather a lame start back in May, and even former Secretary of State Lord Young failed to kick life into the thing when he addressed UK industry bosses a month later. Trevor Benjamin of the Department’s standards unit came to an Open Systems briefing hosted by UniForum UK – previously /usr/group/UK – in London last month to give a progress report on the programme’s development. Its first steps in the three-year effort to 1992 are the publication of a brochure encouraging businesses to look at how they can benefit from open systems, and the availability for demonstration purposes of open systems sites at Aston University and Northants Regional Health Authority. These are to be followed by some practical standards, methodology and requirements guidelines in the form of a management report scheduled for the end of this year. An Open Systems group, with business and government representatives, is planned for the future, to investigate fostering good practice in things like migration plans.
