I recently posted a link to the Datanews article on the Kruispuntbank’s 20 year anniversary (Dutch, French), stating in a tweet that Okkam seems to be one of the few initiatives to deliver a similar infrastructure in the world of the semantic web. I received the following question:
- Question via Twitter
The Kruispuntbank (or Crossroads Bank for Social Security – abbreviated as CBSS) is an infrastructural initiative by Frank Robben in a successful attempt to significantly reduce the administrative burden that existed in Belgium’s social security system (one of the best in the world). Next to all of the different services it provides (e.g., reduction of paper forms, information security and privacy protection, statistical information for policy makers, … more on their website), the CBSS also offers an identification mechanism for people and companies. Using bus mechanisms by Corvé or FEDICT, different government (and other) bodies can collect pieces of data from different sources, and combine them based on those identifiers.
- Okkam’s razor
Okkam is a research project and technology focused at managing identifiers for just about anything you can imagine (beyond people and companies). Much as the Domain Name System or DNS (and all its proprietary or open implementation) is an important piece of infrastructure for the Web, Okkam’s Entity Name System (or ENS) will be an important piece of infrastructure for a Web that you can query in a structured way.
In my view, what the Kruispuntbank (or at least the identification mechanism part of it) did for Belgium’s administration (and all of its data interoperability issues), Okkam can do for a much broader audience. Its more decentralized approach comes with its own set of problems, which are taken care of by more fuzzy techniques. The open approach, the available API, and the foundation are all strong means to help Okkam realize its goals.
On a side note: Flanders’ Ministry of Innovation, Economy and Science (one of Collibra’s customers for business semantics, e.g., see here) is actively looking into Okkam as a technology to help them realize their identifier issues.