Housing Technology is delighted to announce the launch of our programme to develop independent technology standards for application and system integration within housing.
The goal is the formation of an independent Housing Technology Standards Board which would be responsible for the creation of data communication and transfer protocols which are open, free and supplier-neutral. This would make it easier, faster and cheaper for housing applications, such as housing management, mobile working, finance and workforce scheduling, from different technology suppliers (or indeed, in-house systems), to communicate seamlessly without the need for either complex and often expensive bespoke interfaces or excessive manual intervention.
To reiterate what we said about standards in the third (May 2008) issue of Housing Technology, “… enabling integration between applications from different suppliers becomes a burden, despite the interfaces and APIs provided by some of the suppliers. But if you look at other sectors, they have widely-accepted, industry-specific technology standards to facilitate the integration of applications and services from different suppliers. For example, banking and financial services have FIX and ISO20022, manufacturing has STEP, and retail has UnifiedPOS and arts/XML… While a few of the larger housing technology suppliers may want to maintain the status quo, smaller, application-specific suppliers as well as all housing organisations would gain from the widespread adoption of industry standards, freeing up time, budget and resources for better purposes.”
Furthermore, our Housing Technology 2009 report found that over 70 per cent of respondents from housing organisations, which between them are responsible for 2.5 million properties in England, Wales and Scotland, actively supported the idea of independent technology standards.
This has been tried before but mostly as Government- or agency-funded programmes which either relied on too much stick and not enough carrot, or were simply suffocated by bureaucracy. By allowing this standards programme to be coordinated by housing associations, RSLs and technology suppliers, all of whom have an interest in making it work, we are optimistic about its chances of success.
Following a brief straw poll just before we went to print, we have already received confirmed expressions of interest and support from the following: Chartered Institute of Housing; Family Mosaic; Glasgow Housing Association; North Hertfordshire Homes; Orbit Housing Group; Raven Housing Trust; Saxon Weald Housing Association; and Wandle Housing Association.
From the technology suppliers, representatives from Aareon, Capita, Civica, IBS OpenSystems, MIS Active Management Systems and Orchard have also expressed their support for the standards programme.
For our part, we will be hosting a working meeting in London during mid/late February for the ‘early adopters’ to discuss the most effective way of taking the programme forward; please email standards@housing-technology.com for details.
What should you do? The next stage is for other interested parties, from housing organisations and technology suppliers alike, to get in touch with us to pledge their support for the programme. If you are interested, please email standards@housing-technology.com.
