Could European eGovernment Policy Initiatives, in Effect, be Stifling the Development of Learning Technologies?

European eGovernment initiatives give standards boards a prominent role in the governance of standards and specifications for learning, education and training. One of the instruments of governance is a standards catalogue, which is intended to guide users towards appropriate standards to implement. However, these initiatives coincide with a debate of the value of formal standards versus community specifications. The authors analyse the standards catalogue approach against a horizon scan report of current standardisation projects in the sector. They suggest that eGovernment standards boards should focus on semantic, organisational, cultural, political and legal interoperability, in preference to attempting to stabilise practice around a limited number of technical interoperability standards.