As enterprise supply chains and consumer demand chains have beome globalized, they continue to inefficiently share information “one-up/one-down”. Profound "bullwhip effects" in the chains cause managers to scramble with inventory shortages and consumers attempting to understand product recalls, especially food safety recalls. Add to this the increasing usage of personal mobile devices by managers and consumers seeking real-time information about products, materials and ingredient sources. The popularity of mobile devices with consumers is inexorably tugging at enterprise IT departments to shifting to apps and services. But both consumer and enterprise data is a proprietary asset that must be selectively shared to be efficiently shared.
About Steve Holcombe
Unless otherwise noted, all content on this company blog site is authored by Steve Holcombe as President & CEO of Pardalis, Inc. More profile information:
Follow @WholeChainCom™ at each of its online locations:
November 6, 2012 — Pardalis, Inc. announced the issuance today of the following patent by the United States Patent & Trademark Office:
Common point authoring system for the complex sharing of hierarchically authored data objects in a distribution chain, U.S. Patent No. 8,307,000.
The issuance of this patent represents another milestone in the continued, global expansion of Pardalis' parent patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,671,696, and its continuation patents and related applications.
The Pardalis '696 patent was issued by the United States in 2003 and is entitled Informational object authoring and distribution system. Pardalis' 696 patent is the parent patent for the Common Point Authoring™ system. The prior art that Pardalis' patents have been distinguished from stretch back to the 1987 filing of Xerox's Updating local copy of shared data in a collaborative system (U.S. Patent 5,220,657), the 1995 publication of CrystalWeb--A distributed authoring environment for the World-Wide Web (Computer Networks and ISDN Systems), and the 1999 publication of DAPHNE--A tool for Distributed Web Authoring and Publishing (the American Society for Information Science).
"The underlying philosophy of the Common Point Authoring system is to provide people with as much granular control over their information and data experience as is possible," said Steve Holcombe, CEO, Pardalis Inc. "The irony is that in order to increase the flow of proprietary information in supply chains, more granular control over that information must be provided in information sharing systems of any kind. Pardalis' patents apply to authoring by either human participants, or the machines that they automatically program, of immutable informational objects describing the pedigree of uniquely identified products in supply chains."
The critical means and functions of the Common Point Authoring™ system are directed to a system in which an author can create data which is then fixed (immutable) and users can access that immutable data but cannot change it without the creator's permission. They provide for user-centric authoring and registration of uniquely identified, immutable objects for further granular publication, by the choice of each author, among networked systems. The benefits of CPA include minimal, precise disclosures of personal and product identity data to networks fragmented by information silos and concerns over 'data ownership' about products and their ingredients or components.
"There is increasing interest in the application of social networks to the enterprise," Holcombe said. "For instance the selective sharing of Google Plus is a strong step in the direction of providing more granular controls in information sharing. Salesforce.com has linked up with Facebook for targeted advertising delivery that will merge social and business-contact data. The Wikidata Project is creating a free knowledge base by first fixing data elements at a single location with authorizations that may be read and edited by humans and machines alike. All of these activities are pushing in the direction of providing more efficient market mechanisms for the sharing of proprietary information in the Cloud. The more granular the control over information, the greater the chances that information about products in global supply chains will be efficiently shared. The ramifications for global sustainability are tremendous."
Filings relevant to Pardalis' USPTO issued patents are being successfully pursued under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China (PRC), Europe, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand.
About Pardalis, Inc.
Pardalis' Common Point Authoring™ system provides an object-oriented solution for introducing trust and provenance in web communications. For more information, see Pardalis' Global IP.
A Glimmer of Market Validation for Selective Sharing
In late 2005 Pardalis deployed a multi-tenant, enterprise-class SaaS to a Texas livestock market. The web-connected service provided for the selective sharing of data assets in the U.S. beef livestock supply chain. Promising revenues were generated from a backdrop of industry incentives being provided for sourced livestock. The industry incentives themselves were driven by the specter of mandatory livestock identification promised by the USDA in the wake of the 2003 "mad cow" case.
At the livestock market thousands of calves were processed over several sessions. Small livestock producers brought their calves into the auction for weekly sales where they were RFID tagged. An affordable fee per calf was charged to the producers which included the cost of a RFID tag. The tags identifiers were automatically captured, a seller code was entered, and affidavit information was also entered as to the country of origin (USA) of each calf. Buyers paid premium prices for the tagged calves over and above untagged calves. The buyers made money over and above the affordable fee per calf. After each sale, and at the speed of commerce, all seller, buyer and sales information was uploaded into an information tenancy in the SaaS that was controlled by the livestock market. For the first time ever in the industry, the livestock auction selectively authorized access to this information to the buyers via their own individual tenancies in the SaaS.
That any calves were processed at all was not possible without directly addressing the fear of information sharing that was held by both the calf sellers and the livestock market. The calf sellers liked that their respective identities were selectively withheld from the calf buyers. And they liked that a commercial entity they trusted – the livestock market – could stand as a kind of trustee between them and governmental regulators in case an auctioned calf later turned out to be the next ‘mad cow’. In turn the livestock market liked the selectiveness in information sharing because it did not have to share its confidential client list in an “all or nothing” manner to potential competitors on down the supply chain. At that moment in time, the immediate future of selective sharing with the SaaS looked very bright. The selective sharing design deployed by Pardalis in its SaaS fixed data elements at a single location with authorizations controlled by the tenants. Unfortunately, the model could not be continued and scaled at that time to other livestock markets. In 2006 the USDA bowed to political realities and terminated its efforts to introduce national mandatory livestock identification.
And so, too, went the regulatory-driven industry incentives. But … hold that thought.
Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+
Google+ is now 1 year old. In conjunction with Google, researchers Sanjay Kairam, Michael J. Brzozowski, David Huffaker, and Ed H. Chi have published Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+, the first empirical study of behavior in a network designed to facilitate selective sharing:
"Online social networks have become indispensable tools for information sharing, but existing ‘all-or-nothing’ models for sharing have made it difficult for users to target information to specific parts of their networks. In this paper, we study Google+, which enables users to selectively share content with specific ‘Circles’ of people. Through a combination of log analysis with surveys and interviews, we investigate how active users organize and select audiences for shared content. We find that these users frequently engaged in selective sharing, creating circles to manage content across particular life facets, ties of varying strength, and interest-based groups. Motivations to share spanned personal and informational reasons, and users frequently weighed ‘limiting’ factors (e.g. privacy, relevance, and social norms) against the desire to reach a large audience. Our work identifies implications for the design of selective sharing mechanisms in social networks."
While selective sharing may be characterized as being available on other networks (e.g. ‘Lists’ on Facebook), Google is sending signals that making the design of selective sharing controls central to the sharing model offers a great opportunity to help users manage their self-presentations to multiple audiences in the multi-tenancies we call online social networks. Or, put more simply, selective sharing multiplies opportunities for online engagement.
For the purposes of this blog post, we adopt Google’s definition of "selective sharing" to mean providing information producers with controls for overcoming both over-sharing and fear of sharing. Furthermore, we agree with Google that that the design of tools for such selective sharing controls must allow users to balance sender and receiver needs, and to adapt these controls to different types of content. So defined, we believe that almost seven years since the Texas livestock market project, a tipping point has been reached that militates in favor of selective sharing from within supply chains and on to consumers. Now, there have been a lot of things happen over the last seven years that bring us to this point (e.g., the rise of social media, CRM in the Cloud, the explosion of mobile technologies, etc.). But the tipping point we are referencing "follows the money", as they say. We believe that the tipping point toward selective sharing is to be found in the incentives provided by affiliate networks like Google Affiliate Networks.
Google Affiliate Networks
Google Affiliate networks provide a means for affiliates to monetize websites. Here’s a recent video presentation by Google, Automating the Use of Google Affiliate Links to Monetize Your Web Site:
Presented by Ali Pasha & Shaun Cox | Published 2 July 2012 | 47m 11s
The Google Affiliate Network provides incentives for affiliates to monetize their websites based upon actual sales conversions instead of indirectly based upon the number of ad clicks. These are web sites (e.g., http://www.savings.com/) where ads are the raison d'etre of the web site. High value consumers are increasingly scouring promotional, comparison, and customer loyalty sites like savings.com for deals and generally more information about products. Compare that with websites where ads are peripheral to other content (e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/) and where ad clicks are measured using Web 2.0 identity and privacy sharing models.
In our opinion the incentives of affiliate networks have huge potential for matching up with an unmet need in the Cloud for all participants - large and small - of enterprise supply chains to selectively monetize their data assets. For example, data assets pertaining to product traceability, source, sustainability, identity, authenticity, process verification and even compliance with human rights laws, among others, are there to be monetized.
Want to avoid buying blood diamonds? Go to a website that promotes human rights and click on a diamond product link that has been approved by that site. Want to purchase only “Made in USA” products? There’s not a chamber of commerce in the U.S. that won’t want to provide a link to their members’ websites who are also affiliates of an incentive network. Etc.
Unfortunately, these data assets are commonly not shared because of the complete lack of tools for selective sharing, and the fear of sharing (or understandable apathy) engendered under “all or nothing” sharing models. As published back in 1993 by the MIT Sloan School in Why Not One Big Database? Ownership Principles for Database Design: "When it is impossible to provide an explicit contract that rewards those who create and maintain data, ‘ownership’ will be the best way to provide incentives." Data ownership matters. And selective sharing – appropriately designed for enterprises – will match data ownership up with available incentives.
Remember that thought we asked you to hold?
In our opinion the Google Affiliate Network is already providing incentives that are a sustainable, market-driven substitute for what turned out to be unsustainable, USDA-driven incentives. We presume that Google is well aware of potential synergies between Google+ and the Google Affiliate Network. We also presume that Google is well aware that "[w]hile business-critical information is often already gathered in integrated information systems, such as ERP, CRM and SCM systems, the integration of these systems itself (as well as the integration with the abundance of other information sources) is still a major challenge."
We know this is a "big idea" but in our opinion the dynamic blending of Google+ and the Google Affiliate Network could over time bring within reach a holy grail in web communications – the cracking of the data silos of enterprise class supply chains for increased sharing with consumers of what to-date has been "off limits" proprietary product information.
A glimpse of the future may be found for example in the adoption of Google+ by Cadbury UK, but the design for selective sharing of Google+ is currently far from what it needs to attract broad enterprise usage. Sharing in Circles brings to mind Eve Maler’s blog post, Venn and the Art of Data Sharing. That’s really cool for personal sharing (or empowering consumers as is the intent of VRM) but for enterprises Google+ will need to evolve its selective sharing functionalities. Sure, data silos of commercial supply chains are holding personal identities close to their chest (e.g., CRM customer lists) but they’re also walling off product identities with every bit as much zeal, if not more. That creates a different dynamic that, again, typical Web 2.0 "all or nothing" sharing (designed, by the way, around personal identities) does not address.
It should be specially noted, however, that Eve Maler and the User-Managed Access (UMA) group at the Kantara Initiative are providing selective sharing web protocols that place "the emphasis on user visibility into and control over access by others". And Eve in her capacity at Forrester has more recently provided a wonderful update of her earlier blog post, this one entitled A New Venn of Access Control for the API Economy.
But in our opinion before Google+, UMA or any other companies or groups working on selective sharing can have any reasonable chance of addressing "data ownership" in enterprises and their supply chains, they will need to take a careful look at incorporating fixed data elements at a single location with authorizations. It is in regard to this point that we seek to augment the current status of selective sharing. More about that line of thinking (and activities within the WikiData Project) in our earlier “tipping point” blog post, The Tipping Has Arrived: Trust and Provenance in Web Communications.
What do you think? Share your conclusions and opinions by joining us at @WholeChainCom on LinkedIn at http://tinyurl.com/WholeChainCom.
Update on Saturday, July 14, 2012 at 6:26AM by
Steve Holcombe
@NZN: @Steve_Holcombe well-stated.I'd like more on undrlined element,last paragraph:"fixed data elements at a single location with authorizations"
Over the first 12 months of the Data Ownership in the Cloud group on LinkedIn, the following are the top 12 discussions as rated in descending order by the number of comments:
Data Ownership in the Cloud is an open networking group on LinkedIn created in April, 2009. At publication of this blog entry, there are more than 500 members who are loosely networked together under the group's current profile:
Recently the top identity management officer of a major data mining and analytics company said "that ... giving individuals control over the data that is shared ... increases the quality of the data and opens up new business models".
That's an impressive statement coming from a BigCo. But what about going even further? For instance, what about increasing the availability of new, quality data for opening up new, profitable models of data management?
The Data Ownership in the Cloud group on LinkedIn is a global venue for multi-disciplinary networking between technologists and non-technologists interested in providing thought leadership on this critical issue.
What technologies and standards (Cloud Computing, Web 2.0, Semantic Web, Enterprise 2.0, Health 2.0, Privacy 2.0, Manufacturing 2.0, Social Networking, SaaS, Security 2.0, RFID 2.0, microformat standards, identification standards, minimal disclosures, identity management) will enable data ownership in the Cloud?
What are the non-technological factors (sociological, political, psychological, legal)?
Members are heartily encouraged to post, share and discuss stories (including relevant journal entries from their own blogs) that touch upon new and emerging models for user-centric data management.
I've emphasized "between technologists and non-technologists", above, because this is a raison d'etre for the group. It has been my distinct impression that an over-emphasis on technology (primarily 'security') has precluded the free-thinking from which new and emerging models for user-centric data management must come. And though the majority of group members may be defined as 'technologists', the discussions and postings have revealed a wonderful sensitivity to an approach balancing security with risk and opportunity.
Here are some examples.
Luk Vervenne, CEO and founder, Synergetics NV, just posted to the group a link regarding work on a manifesto for the "Internet of Subjects".
The central role individuals now play in the Internet, calls for a radical rethinking of its organisation, in particular, the way the ever-increasing flow of personal data is being created, stored, connected, accessed, protected, tracked, exploited and managed. There is a need to create the foundations of an Internet where the architecture creates the conditions for the free association of self-conscious individuals, beyond the pre-defined boundaries of current information systems and social networks.
Lest you think the group to be a bit too abstract, consider this excerpt from the discussion begun by Dirk Rodgers, Sr. Consultant, Serialization & Pedigree at Cardinal Health, entitled "Who owns supply chain visibility data?"
Who owns supply chain visibility data? Does the manufacturer of a product retain any rights to track that product after it enters the supply chain? What if the product is a pharmaceutical and it is found to have a life-threatening defect? Should technology or standards availability play any role in answering these questions? These kinds of questions come up occasionally in discussions of track and trace systems design when people talk about the future of "full supply chain visibility" ....
And a very active commenter within the Data Ownership group - Eve Maler, Distinguished Engineer, Identity Services at PayPal - has been chairing seminal activities of the User-Managed Access (UMA) working group of the Kantara Initiative:
The purpose of the UMA Work Group (charter) is to develop specs that let an individual control the authorization of data sharing and service access made between online services on the individual's behalf, and to facilitate interoperable implementations of the specs.
But is the group having any affect on the real world being lived by any of its members? Well, that's another critical reason for the existence of the Data Ownership group - "to post, share and discuss stories that touch upon new and emerging models for user-centric data management".
One day last fall, John Bailey, the Executive Direct of Top 10 Produce LLC, came wandering into the group. One thing led to another and now our two companies - Pardalis and Top 10 Produce - have joined with Oklahoma State University (Biosystems and Ag Engineering), North Dakota State University (School of Food Systems) and Michigan State University (Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards) in recently filing for two significant funding opportunities offered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Speciality Crops Research Initiative was filed for with OSU, NDSU and MSU in January, 2010 for $4M over 5 years. The USDA Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative was filed for with OSU for $3M over 4 years. Next up is the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative providing funding opportunities of up to $25M over 5 years. That'll be filed later this spring.
So I can unreservedly say that, yes, when it comes to Pardalis and Top 10 Produce, networking in Data Ownership in the Cloud is having a very positive affect.
Check out the group at http://tinyurl.com/datacloud and see why Dirk Rodgers says, "I believe this group could become the best source for information about the implications [of data ownership in the cloud]."
Update on Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 11:43PM by
Steve Holcombe
With an openbank I get to prove a concept with the most old fashioned metric there is – money…
for what is money than the most generally accepted metric?
I want to educate people about the ownership of their data. No better way than to attach it to their money.
Show them that Data is the new money.
No better way to prove to businesses that people care than to make alot of money off of it.
No better way to get other banks to follow suit than to take money away from them.
yep I am a bit of a more pragmatic gal these days…
Here's my comment ....
Silona,
Truly, data is becoming more and more the 'new money' ....
Data ownership matters because it holds forth the promise of empowering people with much more technological and political control of their information than that provided by conventional information technologies and legislated confidentiality protections.
Give people the opportunity to profit or otherwise benefit from their data products in the form of granular objects, and their valuable data will, ironically, become more accessible to all. Give people the opportunity to familiarly bank their data like they bank their money, and watch the political dynamics shift favorably toward a more data transparent, and data secure, world.
First, there was money. Then there came the banking of money. Now is the time for the Information Age to shift into a Data Banking Age full of new services, and new opportunities, not unlike those brought to us, and facilitated by, our very successful monetary banking systems.
But lest the reader thinks that you and I are too much out in 'left field', or that we are being too idealistic, I'd like to cite what Microsoft and the Information Card Foundation are currently doing that is bringing a realism to the idealism.
Windows CardSpace (aka Microsoft Information Cards), part of the .NET stack, is Microsoft's client software for the Identity Metasystem, an interoperable architecture for digital identity that enables people to have and employ a collection of digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. When an Information Card-enabled application or website wishes to obtain information about the user, the application or website requests the publication of a particular set of claims authored by the user. The CardSpace user interface then appears, switching the display to the CardSpace service, which displays the user's registered identities. The user selects their InfoCard to verify their identity.
Kim Cameron, Chief Identity Officer, Microsoft, is seeking to extend Microsoft's Information Cards with 'minimum disclosures' (that is, claims granularly derived from Information Cards). See "Proposal for a Common Identity Framework: A User-Centric Identity Metasystem" by Kim Cameron, Reinhard Posch, Kai Rannenberg on October 9, 2008.
The granular control of identity in the form of claims is, I suggest, a form of 'data banking', and a form of technological 'data ownership'. Microsoft's CardSpace is now officially being marketed in the context of the 'Geneva Framework', a Claims Based Access Platform. By marketing its Geneva Framework, Microsoft is bringing data banking and data ownership closer and closer to the mainstream.
[This comment previously posted in two parts to a version of Silona's blog post shared to the Data Ownership in the Cloud networking group on LinkedIn - http://tinyurl.com/datacloud]
Tuesday, November 6, 2012 at 9:21AM 
